


Nemesis of Neglect

by LadyDracarys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death, Drug Use, F/M, Jack the Ripper AU, Mash-up, Murder, Mystery, Non-Canonical Violence, Red Hawke, Sex, This is an adult horror story - reader discretion advised., Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-01-15 18:42:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12326682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDracarys/pseuds/LadyDracarys
Summary: The year is 9:34 Dragon and Kirkwall is labored with unrest. In previous years, many Fereldan refugees and Qunari immigrants flooded the streets, tipping the delicate balance within the city-state wherein public disobedience and heinous crime have now risen supreme. The city slums are home to a majority of the thriving corruption and as such, most of the governmental neglect - or perhaps fatigue - is felt there. Many citizens desperately try to claim control of the law with their own hands, for better or worse…One Fereldan refugee used the unrest to her benefit as she dragged her family from the gutters into the affluence of high society. Taking justice upon herself and recognizing opportunities, she earned a reputation and enough coin to reestablish her family's status. Even though many of the upper echelon disapprove of her tactics, person, and origins, Marian “Ian” Hawke cares little for the opinions of those who oppose her.This is a canon divergent Dragon Age and True Crime mash-up of Kirkwall, and London’s notorious Jack the Ripper. It is a tale not for the faint of heart, but rather for the reader who wishes to ride a thrilling mystery of sex, deception, and murder.





	1. Prologue

# 

# Prologue

There is a chill in the air. A draft slips through the window opposite Ian’s desk, all but snuffing her flickering candle. A shiver shakes down her spine, and she groans while rubbing her hands vigorously down her arms. Deciding to bear the chill of her office no longer, Ian stacks her day’s letters, placing the papers delicately within her desk drawer.

Leaning back in her chair, she considers her choices for the late evening’s relaxation. A crooked smile cocks her lips to the side before her thoughts are interrupted by a row outside her door. Groaning deeper, she reaches into her vest pocket and pulls out her watch. It is not too late. The evening can be salvaged. Thus, she decides to leave the sanctity of her study before she is dragged into whatever quarrel has her mother’s voice so shrill. She hazards to make her escape from the estate and steps into the hall, directing her glare toward the foyer, or more specifically, to her coat.

“Bethany, please,” Leandra calls out. “At the very least, tell me where you are going!”

“Mother, really! You never put these questions to Ian. You needn’t worry of me. I will be back before long,” Bethany says. She snaps a blue velvet cloak around her shoulders and delicately places its hood over her long and expertly curled brown hair.

“Marian!” Leandra shouts just as Ian reaches the threshold to the foyer. “Tell her. Tell her that it is too dangerous for a young woman like her to wander this city at night! And...and with  _ those people _ ...”

Bethany sighs. “ _Those_ _people_ are my friends Mother, and there is nothing wrong with them.” 

“Bethany is a grown woman,” Ian mutters. 

“Thank you, Ian.”

“But Marian, Bethany is not as experienced as you with...with…”

Ian grunts. “With criminals, Mother? Men of my ilk?”

Leandra stomps one demanding foot on the wooden flooring. The family dog lifts his head from his curled position in front of the fire and whines a soft, concerned sound. With the room’s attention momentarily fixed on her, Leandra yells, “She could easily be taken advantage of!”

Ian slips her arms through her warm wool coat and adjusts her vest before reaching for her bowler. Nestling it just above her eyes, she flashes a glance at her mother and younger sister. Bethany’s cloak practically glows beside the low fire in the hearth. She stands tall and proud beside her mother, but her face is pleading with Ian. 

“She is not a little lost puppy, Mother. She’s more Mabari than you give her credit,” Ian says. Her mother scowls, but watches Bethany march triumphantly to the foyer without further argument. 

“Thank you Sister,” Bethany says, “although, I could have done without being compared to a dog. Warhound or not.” 

The two women exit the estate, the defeated sound of their mother calling out behind them as Ian shuts the door.  _ “Please be careful, my children.” _

Ian rolls back her shoulders and lights a rolled cigarette taken from her breast pocket. She breathes in the smoky tobacco with the crisp night air before sideways glancing at the moonlight-shimmering blue of her sister’s hooded head. With an aggravated sigh she says, “Be smart, Bethany. If anything were to happen to you now, Mother would wring my neck. I have enough to deal with without her persecution.”

Bethany does not turn to her, but rather, readjusts her cloak snuggly around her body and walks into Hightown’s darkness. The words, “I can take care of myself,” trail behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> \--  
> Title inspired by Joseph Swain’s 1888 etching depicting the Spirit of Crime haunting the streets of Whitechapel.


	2. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note: Thank you for coming aboard my steam train of horror, lies, and death.  
> 

# 

# Chapter One

As the sun peeks through the curtains of Jethann’s room, Ian blearily cracks open her eyes. She lets out a tiny groan and covers her face from the accosting streams of bright light. The warm breath of Jethann then tickles the back of her neck, and he tightens the hold he has around her middle. A hum dipped deliciously in seduction rumbles from his throat as his hand then slides up Ian’s stomach to clutch and knead softly at her breast.

“Has my lady risen from her heavenly slumber?” his voice whispers into her skin, followed closely by tempting kisses peppered on the back of her neck and shoulders.

“ _Mmm_ yes,” she says. The coarseness of her sleep-laden throat causes her voice to rasp and crack. “I thought it a sour thing, but you now remind me of all the possibilities the day could bring.”

Jethann pinches her nipple sharply, and she hisses breath through her teeth. Amused, he hums and glides his tongue along to slope of her neck to her ear. “You paid for the entire night, love. No reason why the early morning cannot be consumed by it.”

Ian moans and turns her naked body through the sheets to face him. “You make an excellent point, Jethann.” She smirks into the hooded, pearlescent eyes of the elven man beside her. His promiscuous hand trails back down from her breast to find purchase between her thighs and effectively stops Ian’s breath. He takes her mouth with his, lightly drawing in her lower lip, sucking it as they giggle low, wicked sounds.

Unfortunately for them, a loud banging rattles the door to the room with the muffled sounds of her name being summoned from the other side.

“Fuck off!” Ian yells at the door. “I’ve paid and will continue to pay as I like!”

But the door’s lock betrays the couple when keys jingle within it, giving way to Madame Lusine as she storms inside the room. “Miss Hawke, you know I do not allow disruption in my halls and your brother is loudly disrupting everything!”

Ian sits upright in the plush bed, holding its covers modestly to her chest. “Carver? Here? What in hell for?”

“I am the Madame here, Hawke, not your servant. If you have questions, I suggest you see to _him_ immediately. He is in the mezzanine screaming your name.” Lusine turns to leave. “Get him out of here,” added before she slams the door behind her.

Silence befalls the room. Ian sits befuddled for a brief moment before evacuating the serenity she once cherished in the sheets. Quickly storming across the lush carpets, anger steadily rising in her chest with each step, she reaches for her undergarments, trousers, and boots.

“Oh, but Ian, what about us, love?” Jethann sweetly whines. He sounds almost miles away. His soft voice tries to tempt her back to him, but at first, she ignores him.

“I’m sorry, Jethann,” she finally says while buttoning her shirt and tucking it into her trousers. “If that pain in my arse is here, he must have something idiotic to slam in my lap. It’s sure to destroy my entire day, if not my entire week.” She ties her tie quickly, and slips on her vest. Running her fingers through her short, shaggy black locks, she reaches and drapes her coat over her arm and snatches her bowler. Marching for the door, she sends the briefest of smiles to the elf in the bed and swipes a gold coin from her pocket. Flicking it onto a tabletop she says, “For your trouble and well intentions. Until next time,” then flies out the door.

Ian races through the ornate and dreamy halls of the brothel, where decadent red silk and golden thread cascade from damask papered walls. She soon finds her brother angrily tapping his foot near the front door. Two large doormen and a furious Madame Lusine stand between him and the brothel proper.

When Carver spots Ian approaching, he crosses his arms. “About time you showed up!”

Ian nods a sharp gesture at Lusine as she roughly grabs Carver’s arm and yanks him outside. “How dare you. How did you know I was here?” she asks once in the courtyard.

“It’s you, Ian. I knew you’d either be at The Blooming Rose or The Hanged Man. Seemed a bit early to be getting pissed, even for _you_.”

“Bugger off. Who do you even think you are, wearing _that thing_ while you speak to me?” Ian points to a pin on Carver’s lapel, a metal piece of heraldry depicting a flaming sword. “I should punch you square in the jaw just for that.”

“The Knights Templar is a just organization, Sister. They are the few that actually care to bring true order to this fleabag city.”

Ian steps into Carver’s face and glares into his blue eyes. As far as she is concerned, their eye color is the only thing they have in common. He was no brother to her as soon as he joined the Templars. “You are all self-righteous thugs. Father would be ashamed of you.”

An infinitesimal flinch runs through Carver’s face as saliva from Ian’s distaste speckles across his skin. But mostly, Carver stands firm and reciprocates the hate emanating off her and her stare. “Shut up for one second, Marian. I’m not here for you, or for me. This is for Bethany.”

A chill spikes in Ian’s spine and she immediately stands back on her heels. “Bethany? Why?”

“I don’t know. We received word from Aveline this morning, but she was looking for _you_. She needs us to come at once.”

“Come where?”

“She sent you an address in Lowtown. I brought the carriage.”

Carver gestures to the black carriage nearby with Ian’s slow but trusted driver, Sandal, sitting atop it. Without a word she marches forward and tips her bowler at the young man before climbing inside. “Enchanted,” Sandal replies. It is the only word Ian has ever heard the young man say.

As they ride through Hightown and enter the lower depths of Kirkwall’s slums, Ian stares out the small window of her carriage. She feels weighted, guilty, for flaunting her wealth in the streets she so recently called home. If not for the urgency and mystery pertaining to her sister, she would have walked. Instead, her eyes comb the muddy passages of Lowtown from her perch on high. Her horse is surely adding to the shit and filth of the avenues and alleyways in which the least fortunate huddle and fight to survive.

There is a foul pit in her chest. She wonders what would bring Bethany back to these streets. What could Bethany have been involved with down here? Honestly, Ian never paid her sister much mind. She just assumed the girl had taken to high-society living as their mother had taught her to aspire to, as a child.

While they were not the richest of families in Ferelden, they were certainly not paupers. But Leandra had been raised in the highest homes of Kirkwall. Her family had long been regarded as one of the richest and grandest in the then illustrious city. It was not until Leandra ran off to Ferelden for love that she lost any status, and it was not until they attempted to return to her home that she hit the bottom.

However, in the rolling hills of Ferelden, Leandra always taught her children to strive for greatness - and for her daughters to grow to be proper ladies. But all of her teachings about the accomplishments of delicate females fell on deaf ears with Ian.

Even as a young girl, Ian preferred the clothing, manners, and even names of men to women. To this end, she spent everyday in constant battle with her mother over her _misguided_ choices. But Bethany was different. Bethany took to the role of ladies sans complaint. She enjoyed the lovely dresses and hobbies that society dictated were fit for female sensibilities.

Bethany is the pride of her mother’s eye.

So when Ian managed to fight and drag her family back out of the gutter, she easily assumed that with the finery her sister began to wear, and the tea times she held in the solarium, that she was the epitome of everything Leandra always had wished. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to question in regards to Bethany’s interests. And in that case, why on Andraste’s flaming wet crotch would she _ever_ have reason to come back to Lowtown?

Bethany was never involved in Ian’s affairs. Ian saw to that. If anyone were to bear the weight of the Hawke family, it would be Ian. Her father had long passed, and her brother was a useless baffoun. That left only Ian to bring her mother’s dreams to reality. There were far too many things she did, far too many things she _had_ to do, to ever dream of involving her sister. The only tarnish Ian ever gave Bethany or her mother was their association to her. But even the society in Kirkwall can only snub their noses for so long against rags-to-riches foreigners. Ian withholds too many secrets on the lot of them to keep to their snobbery. Fragile information that they know Ian would not hesitate to exploit for the sake of her family.

Since moving into Hightown, Ian and her mother have learned to casually ignore each other. Leandra is grateful to be back in a place of comfort, and if that means her eldest defies the very meaning of decency to keep her there, she has proven that she is willing to look the other way. Especially if that means she can play dress-up with her doll of a younger daughter in the way she has always dreamed.

But riding now, through these streets of Lowtown, Ian wonders if her neglectful attention on her sister’s affairs has ultimately brought her harm. No matter what she has assumed or expected of Bethany, from this point on, Ian will pay closer mind to her sister’s dealings, and with whom she is associating.

The carriage pulls to a jockeyed stop outside a dingy narrow alleyway. Too narrow for the carriage to enter. Ian and Carver step out into the dirt, the rank smell of decay and garbage quickly filling Ian’s lungs.

“Thank you, Sandal. Go on home now,” Ian says. The dwarf boy smiles, says his famous one word, and steers the horse back toward Hightown.

Turning to the alley, Ian notices many members of the Kirkwall Guard meandering the tight space. Her heart races. A cold sweat drips down her back. What could Bethany possibly have been involved in that requires so many guardsmen?

Her shoulders slam into guards as she walks forward. She bumps and digs into wet, dirty brick as she pushes past. Her pace hastening, she trips and stumbles over garbage and broken bottles. The sounds of angry men miss her ears, for her attention is glued on a doorway ahead. Before she reaches that doorway, however, the one to the hovel in which most of the men file in and out, the red headed Guard Captain Aveline Vallen appears.

Aveline is about the only other established woman in Kirkwall who managed to put the opinions of men - like where the proper place for a woman resides - firmly up their arses. Aveline is a long time friend and associate of Ian’s. Together, they had fought their way through the destruction of Ferelden, traveled against the currents to Kirkwall, and then by the skin of their teeth, made names for themselves within the city’s wicked and impossible walls. Much like Ian, Aveline is the type of woman who stands taller than her male counterparts due to more than the heel of her shoe.

But now, as she pushes her men from her way, Aveline is not standing tall. She is not confident. Her green eyes are fraught with worry and dread. If Ian were any lesser a woman of physical and mental strength, she may have buckled under that gaze of Aveline’s.

“Hawke,” she says, a bit too sullenly, as she raises her hand to stop Ian from walking any farther. “I don’t want you to see this, but I fear what you would do to me if I hadn’t called on you.”

“Where is our sister, Aveline?” Carver asks.

Aveline’s eyes dash over to Carver before falling to the grime at their feet. She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry.”

That’s all Ian needs to hear. Without thinking, she shoves the woman out of her way and runs to the doorway. The sounds of herself screaming her sister's name echo softly as if from a far away land. Ian faintly hears Aveline order men to leave the scene, when she stops dead in her tracks.

Shimmering blue velvet is crumpled and wet on a dirty wooden floor.

Ian swallows hard and steps fully into the room. She feels nothing. The scene is so grotesque, so unimaginable, that she cannot believe it. And she stands there, motionless, staring at the bloody body sprawled across the floor. Brown hair in loose ringlets splayed and matted and soaked in red like a horrific halo of what was stolen from the world.

Carver shoves past. He is screaming. She knows he is screaming. But she cannot hear it. All Ian can hear is a high-pitched ringing. Everything sounds and feels like she has been submerged underwater. She cannot breathe. She cannot hear. She can barely even think, except out of desperation for reality to be something other than what she is seeing.

Her brother’s body falls on its knees. His hands desperately try to find something to touch, something to grab onto that is Bethany, but instead, they hang helplessly in the air. Tears stream down his cheeks as if his tear ducts are tossing buckets of the salty, wounded liquid. He turns his head to Ian and shouts angry words. Accusatory fingers wag in her direction. But all Ian can do is stand there. Staring.

The body looks like Bethany. It is wearing her clothing. However, the disfigurement and carnage prohibits Ian’s brain from believing that this pile of mutilated blood and flesh belongs to her little sister.

Her throat, cut. Her gut, open. Her eyes, wide. The unique golden color of her iris stares vacantly at the ceiling.

“Why are you just standing there?!” she hears Carver yell, and at that moment, Ian discovers the knot in her stomach is shooting upwards. She rushes to the edge of the room and vomits on the floor. All of her shock, all of her horror, erupts from her body and splashes and mixes into her sister’s blood. The realization of everything slams into her mind like a steam engine. Her sister is dead. Murdered. And her sick is splashing into the blood.

Bethany’s blood.

Her body convulses harder.

Ian is no stranger to blood or the dead. She is no stranger to the horrors of men. In fact, she has taken part when the need required. But none of those bodies, none of those foul creatures she has cut down...were her little sister. Her little sister whom Ian loved dearly, but to whom she never expressed the depths of her affection.

Ian braces herself with one hand against the brick wall beside her as she expels the final contents of her stomach. Final dry heaves that feel like her insides are being wrung through a laundry press. Coughing, she attempts to right herself and wipe the sick from her mouth. As she straightens, she notices red words painted on the wall above her sister’s body.

_DEATH TO CONJURERS._

She stares at the words. Painted in blood, no doubt. Bethany’s blood. The blood of a sweet, kind young woman. A woman who never brought harm to a single living creature. That woman’s blood now painted in hate on the walls of a disgusting, rat infested hovel.

Soon she feels Aveline’s arm wrap around her shoulders, and her friend ushers her out of the room. At the same time, a guardsman helps Carver from his knees.

She’s ushered, and she stares blankly, and so many questions swirl in her mind. Questions that she cannot find the breath needed to produce the sounds. Instead, her lips move slowly, forming syllables in shape alone.

Eventually emerging from the dark confines of the alleyway, she blinks and strains her eyes in the sudden light flowing from open sky.

“Go home, Hawke,” Aveline says, her freckled face appearing in Ian’s view. The Guard Captain snaps her fingers at one of her men. “Guardsman Donnic will make sure your journey back to Hightown happens safely. Go home and be with your family. Mourn. And I promise you, I will find the monster who did this.” She squeezes Ian’s shoulders. “When you are ready, find me in my office, and I will tell you anything I can.”

A single tear escapes Ian’s eye as she is handed into the care of Donnic. Her feet move, but only out of habit, and her mind swims in the questions she has yet the strength to ask.


	3. Two

# 

#  Chapter Two 

Hours filled with the sounds of Leandra and Carver mourning turn slowly throughout the day. Silently, Ian sits in her home and listens to her mother berate her and blame her for Bethany’s demise. Ian hasn’t the strength to object, in fact, she agrees. So, she listens and takes every hurtful word her mother cries, absorbing each one into her burden. Building blocks to strengthen her revenge. Steam to power her hate, both at herself and at Kirkwall.

Eventually, late in the evening, her mother loses the energy to continue and retires to her bedroom. All who reside in the house follow suit, and Ian lies awake in her bed, listening to the soft sobs coming from her mother’s room.

She stares at the top of her bed’s crimson canopy. She watches lights and shadows move along her stone walls, ghostly shapes haunting her from large bedroom windows. She listens to the low cracks of the wood in her small hearth after the sounds of her mother give way to exhaustion and sleep.

_ Death to conjurers. _

The evil words repeat in her mind. 

There are those who exhibit a talent in the conjuring of magic. The practice, whether natural to the person or not, is strictly forbidden by both governmental law and the law of the Maker. Those who are devout are especially zealous against anyone who may attempt at using their conjuring abilities, and the common people as a whole tend to view it as an evil and vile practice.

The self-righteous men Carver has involved himself with are some of those who think they fight against wickedness by hunting and imprisoning conjurers. Victims are rarely heard from or seen again, and those who do come back from the Templar’s hold are never the same people they once were.

The order is an unofficial, though widely accepted, special branch of the Chantry. The Chantry does not formally lay claim to the Templars, however it is one of those unspoken truths that everyone knows and most accept, even support.

Ian is not one of those supporters. She views them as a group of thugs acting as illegal enforcement for a religion. A view that was instilled in her since childhood by her father. For the reason her mother and father fled Kirkwall to begin with - where the gang of Templars is most cherished and rampant - was due to the fact that Malcolm Hawke was one of those souls who naturally took to magic. His resistance to religious persecution caused him to flee, his loving young bride in tow.

It made sense that Bethany would have inherited their father’s abilities, but she never spoke of it. Ian knew that she, too, held some talent for conjuring. However, while her father fled in order to practice his beliefs, he discouraged it from his children. To amplify or use one’s abilities was to risk one’s life. Dangerous, addictive, and highly guarded substances were sometimes involved, and Malcolm did his best to shield his children from the knowledge.

Malcolm used his own abilities far from home, often leaving to perform feats for both shady and legitimate organizations alike. He wanted a different life for his children, and he explained early on to Ian that while he saw potential within her, he wished for her to pursue a more normal way of life.

Funny how the wishes of parents work out for their offspring.

Ian followed her father’s wishes for the most part, in that course anyway. She never cared much to dabble in magic and worked on her other skills instead. She never assumed her siblings conjured, either. They never spoke of it. It was never a topic the family discussed at the dinner table. Instead, Ian held fast to ideals that opposed the Chantry and left it at that.

To think that Bethany could have been involved in magic, conjuring, bending the laws of physics with others like her… in the shadows of Lowtown… 

Ian is aware of pockets, or perhaps covens, of people who practice in secret.

But Bethany?

If true, Ian knows less of her sister than she had ever imagined.

As dawn crests the smoky horizon over Hightown’s billowing black chimneys, Ian feels her mind returning. She has questions, and she’s found her voice to demand them answered.

It does not take her long to dress and storm to the city center. The Viscount’s Keep had barely unlocked its doors by the time Ian slams them open. A smattering of guardsmen and townspeople stand in the grand hall, most of whom stare wide-eyed at Ian as she marches past, startled by her loud and commanding entrance. Albeit, she has bloodlust in her eyes, there are still those in the city who find it hard not to stare when they see a woman in trousers walk by.

Quickly scaling the red carpeted marble steps at the end of the opulent hall, Ian veers toward Aveline’s office. Upon arrival, she does not knock, she does not announce herself, she whips the door open with such force that it slams into the wall making the office windows rattle.

“Why is my sister dead?” Ian demands, fists slamming onto Aveline’s large oak desk. “I want answers, Aveline.”

“Hawke,” Aveline says, slowly raising her eyes from the papers in front of her. Unlike the windowpanes, Aveline is not at all startled by the way Ian entered. It was not the first time Ian’s paraded through the keep in such a manner, in fact, it is her tendency. 

The Guard Captain sighs and rubs her forehead with tense fingers. “I’m trying to figure that out.”

“Death to conjurers? What is that about, Bethany never mentioned--”

“I’m sorry to say, your sister was part of a group, a cult maybe. It seems she had magical talent that she kept secret.”

Ian slumps into a chair opposite Aveline’s desk. “Do you have any leads?”

“Unfortunately, hers was not the first murder of this nature,” Aveline admits with a drop to her shoulders.

“What are you saying, there have been others?”

“One. A man. Cut in a similar fashion with the same writing over his body.”

“Why hadn’t I heard of this, Aveline?” Ian shouts.

“Hawke, you of all people know that murder is no strange fate for those who haunt Lowtown. I had hoped it was an isolated incident. I kept the details hush in an attempt to not start a stir, or inspire others to be as gruesome.”

“And this man, he was also a conjurer? Are there other similarities?”

“Both had the message, both had their throats cut, and…” Aveline pauses and avoids eye contact.

“Tell me.”

“You no doubt noticed Bethany’s stomach. I received word from the medical examiner that… Oh, Hawke, I’m sorry.” She shakes her head, fingers once again finding purchase on the forehead that clearly plagues her with pain. “They took her womb.”

“Her womb? They took…” Ian’s voice trails off. That familiar sick feeling possesses her stomach. She feels the color leave her face, but she presses on with her questions, though her voice asks them in a weakened state. “What does that have to do with the man, or magic?”

“He had been castrated. I think it is another message of the killer’s. Even more gruesome than the writing.”

Ian ponders for a moment before her realization softly leaves her lips. “Reproduction. Eliminate conjurers entirely...”

“I’m afraid there will be more. So far, what we know is that he must be intelligent. Well-educated or with access, for him to have an understanding of anatomy, and also I think he works alone. He is either strong enough to quickly overtake his victims, or perhaps he lures them willingly. I cannot be sure which.” She pauses and watches Ian for a moment. “I want to keep this hush, Hawke. I do not want copycats or hysteria to strike our streets. I need to work this right. I have my best men going through the evidence, and I’ve been reviewing it constantly, trying to connect the dots. This all needs to be done above board, Ian. I can’t have chaos take over the investigation.”

“Aveline, people need to know. These groups of conjurers need to know they are in even more danger than normal. They have families. If I had known this, maybe I could have kept Bethany safe.”

“You didn’t even know she had magic.”

Like the pebble needed to tip the scales from sickness over to the favor of rage, Ian’s fury takes hold. In one swift movement, she slams her feet to the ground and launches her body so that her palms land on Aveline’s desk. She leans across it and sneers down at the Captain. “Well I do now, don’t I? Or at least whoever this monster is  _ thought  _ she was. Silence is a grave mistake. Who did she know, Aveline? Tell me.”

“I would kindly remind you that you are in the office of the Guard Captain, Hawke. You do not get to question me in such a manner, no matter our personal history, or your personal tragedy,” Aveline says. An underlying river of anger, a tremor of a warning lies within her tone.

Ian’s eyes scan the woman across her, curling her lip in a snarl. “Useless. The city guard have always been and always will be useless.” From her fists, she pushes herself upright and points to Aveline’s office window. “The little people of this city get no justice. And it’s due to the lack of care from this house that people like me even earn a living. Your men do nothing for them.” She shakes her head and turns to stalk out the door.

Aveline yells after her. “Do not take law into your own hands on this, Hawke! I’m warning you! I will not turn a blind eye to you this time! It is my duty!” The words fall on deaf ears. Ian has no trust in the government. If there was any control on this city, this wouldn’t have happened. 

Her feet carry her through Kirkwall to the slums. The stark contrast between the care of the streets in Hightown, especially the Viscount district, and the laxity in Lowtown is even more apparent when traveled at once. No longer are trees and bushes decorating the clean cobblestone. No longer are there guardsmen patrolling in almost laughable numbers - whose main purpose seems to be helping the elderly society folk from their stately carriages, and knocking their billy clubs on rot iron fencing when rascal children get too loud. 

None of that is present. 

No, instead of wide avenues lined with beautiful estates, the streets turn smaller and smaller until bystanders and carriages alike have difficulty moving. Instead of greenery and fencing, there is filth and crates - poor folk standing with stolen baubles hollering at passersby to purchase their treasures for the lovely ladies at home. Instead of cobblestone that is swept by silent, invisible men, the streets begin to resemble more of rivers of mud, shit, and piss than anything else. And instead of kind guardsmen keeping order and helping the weak, one more likely will find them heckling or beating the numerous starving unfortunates in rags.

Ian follows the ruin to The Hanged Man. The inn happens to be the epicenter from dealings with those who do not wish to strictly follow the law. Law that has many times failed them all. If Ian wants to learn more about the underground groups of conjurers, and whom may wish them murdered, The Hanged Man is the best place to start. 

It is also a place where she can have a drink to cut her nerves, and a meal that is more palatable. She’s never had much taste for higher cooking,  _ peasant  _ food is perfectly fine to her.

She orders the day’s mash with a stiff drink to accompany it, and she sits down at the end of a long wooden bench and a long wooden table. 

She does not have to wait before her first visitor strides by.

“Ian,” a thick Rivaini accent purrs as slender tan fingers grip at Ian’s shoulders from behind. Lips trail so close to the shell of her ear that Ian feels them tickle her tiny hairs. “I am so sorry to hear about Bethany.”

“You know? Aveline said she was keeping it hush.”

“Oh please, you know that nothing stays hush in Lowtown, and certainly not from me,” Isabela says as she produces herself from behind, strutting slowly around the table to other side.

“How much do you know?” Ian asks as the woman sits. 

Isabela smirks, her amber eyes peering coyly through fallen strands of thick, wavy black hair. “As much as there is to know, I suppose.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Sweet Bethany walked with the a new crowd. No matter how hard you worked to keep her from here, she was determined, apparently.”

“Why didn’t I know about this? Why didn’t you tell me?” Ian feels her anger rise in her chest. The city knew her, especially the folk of Lowtown knew that everything she did was to protect her family. People knew, yet didn’t bother to warn her of her sister’s secret, and it is becoming infuriating.

Isabela crosses her arms and tilts her head. “Listen, you spend so much time in that mansion of yours now, honestly, how am I supposed to have any idea what you know and don’t know anymore?”

Ian growls and glares across the table. “I am here at least two nights a week, Isabela.”

“Yeah, sure. Getting pissed and knocking out benders. But you’re not  _ truly  _ here. Not like you used to be.”

Ian speaks low, enunciating each syllable as if it is dripped in blood. “You should have told me.”

“And risk your fist coming at my head next? No, thank you.” Isabela scoffs. They sit silently for a moment, a war of the wills, but Ian’s glare bores a hole into Isabela’s sarcastic armor. Finally, the woman sighs in capitulation. “I’m sorry, Ian. If I had known this would happen to her, I wouldn’t have listened to her. I would have told you.”

That is a shock to Ian, and she feels a cold rush across her skin. “She talked to you about this?”

“Not in so many words, no. I found out a little of what she was up to and confronted her. She begged me not to tell you. She assured me that she had everything under control.”

“What do you know?”

“Not as much as it sounds, I’m sure, but I saw her talking to Merrill here a lot. That seemed a bit odd to me, especially since if she spotted you walk in, she vanished.”

Merrill is a known conjurer in Lowtown, and a unique one at that as she moved from a small clan of elves outside the city. It is fabled that her people have long mastered the art of exotic magics that Ian never cared to investigate.

Ian’s food and drink arrive. Everything feeling a little too much, and she grabs the mug of amber liquid and gulps it down so quickly that small rivers of whiskey stream down from the corners of her mouth.

“What did Bethany say to you?” Ian asks, wiping the corners of her mouth on her coat’s sleeve.

“Nothing much except to not tell you.”

Their conversation is interrupted by a drunk fool who strides up to their table. “Well aren’t you as pretty as pie... Except you,” the man says with a burp to punctuate it, pointing at Ian with a lazy finger. “What is it with you dressin’ like a man. One’d assume you like to fuck ladies like a man, too? Are you going to fuck--”

Ian chucks her empty mug at the drunk’s face, and before he can react, she is out of her seat and slamming his body to the ground. He lands with a loud thud, and she is on top of him in an instant. Her left fist gathers the garb at his neck, and her face hovers maliciously over his. The smell of his breath disgusts her, only intensifying her snarl. 

“Assumptions are the lies of wicked demons in your ear,” Ian says in a low growl. “Now unless you want me to remove both of yours,” Ian’s right hand grabs hold of his ear and pulls until the man whines and writhes beneath her, “then I suggest you leave. My business is none of your own.”

“Hey, hey, Hawke. This is a little early for bar fights, even for you, don’t you think?” a raspy voice says beside them. Boots walk tentatively beside her head. Ian looks up to find the short-statured Varric Tethras standing over them. “Why don’t you let the man go and come sit with me in a my office, huh? Sound good? A little less violent, perhaps?”

Ian grunts and pushes herself off the drunk. She spits at the feet of the man before following Varric to his office in the rear of the tavern. She glances back, and with satisfaction, watches Isabela toss the sod out the tavern door and into the street.

Varric gestures for Ian to sit at his table in his personal room in the inn, and then shuts his door behind them. “How are you holding up, kid? To anyone else I’d say not very well, but that behavior isn’t exactly uncommon.”

Ian grunts again and slumps into one of his dwarven inspired chairs, geometric and sturdy by design with furs draped over the seat and arms. Varric sits at the head of the table and patiently waits while Ian stares into a roaring fire across from her.

“You loved her, how the fuck are you handling it?” Ian eventually grumbles.

Varric sighs. “I want to filet the bastard that did it.”

“Only if I gut him first.” There is a silence again until Ian adds, “Aveline thinks there will be more. We have to stop him.”

“Anything I can do to help, you just let me know,” Varric says, and he means it. The dwarf is probably the one man in this city with the most connections. He runs a rag called  _ Bianca Knows  _ that is tossed around the city. Legends swarm the streets about the dwarf, though Ian knows better. The most comical of the rumors being that he has actual ears on the walls of alleyways.

“You need to get the word out to anyone who may need it,” Ian says. “Aveline doesn’t want it in the papers, but you follow Lowtown’s rules.”

Varric nods. “Consider it done. I already drafted the story and sent it to my printer this morning.”

“Good. Let’s hope we get this guy before there is another Bethany.” Ian glances at Varric, noticing the way his gaze hangs in the air. The far-off stare of a man who is nowhere nearby. Instead, his mind drowns in a dimension of sadness and regret. It is well known how deeply he admired Bethany, though he never once acted on his feelings.

A soft knock at the door calls their attention, and Varric summons the person to enter. A young boy walks in, shaken, dirty, and obviously malnourished. He speaks with a tremor and his tattered gloved hand holds out an envelope like it could be his unfortunate ticket to the Maker. “I have a letter for M-M-Miss Hawke. A man gave me six coppers to deliver it right away.”

“What man, boy? Speak up,” Ian says as she takes the envelope from his hand.

“Don’t know, Miss. He was in the shadows. Face covered up with a scarf.”

“Where was this man now?” Varric asks.

The boy shrugs his shoulders and points to the far wall. “Called me from the alley by the inn, he did.” The boy looks between them both a few times and before turning and bolting from the room.

“Hey! Get back here!” Ian yells, but he’s gone. She hesitates and stares at the letter in her hand. Her curiosity for its contents ultimately outweighs her will to chase the child, and she opens the envelope to find red writing.

_ I know your Captain pet thinks she’ll have me. It gives me quite a thrill.  _

_ I am down on witches. Will rip them up till their foul wickedness reeks these streets no longer. Your sister was grand work, but I gave the lady no time to squeal. Saved a bit of her tainted blood to write this letter, though the stuff went thick. Red ink will have to do. _

_ I’ve found I enjoy this venture more than I’d thought. First out of passion, second of lust, the next will follow and follow until the job is done. It is my calling. _

_ Death to conjurers. _

_ Ripper _

Ian places the paper on Varric’s table. Whomever this  _ Ripper  _ is, he seems to know Ian, and knew he was killing her sister. If Ian had conviction before, it has now been increased ten-fold. She eyes Varric, his nervous wait apparent in the chewing of his lower lip and the wringing of his hands. Glancing back at the letter she says, “I need to speak to Merrill.” 


	4. Three

# 

# Chapter Three

Sitting in Merrill’s modest home, the elf pours Ian a cup of tea. “I am so very sorry, Ian. Bethany was such a wonderful person. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how someone could do such a thing to her,” she says.

Point blank, Ian asks, “Did you know she was a conjurer?”

Merrill’s hold on her teapot stammers and the pottery rattles. She sets it down along with herself, eyes firmly fixed to the ground. “I did.”

“I assume she begged you not to tell me.”

“She did.”

“Why? Why did she want it secret from me?” Ian drinks from her tea. It mildly soothes the headache forming from lack of sleep and lack of whiskey. Setting it down, she reaches into her breast pocket and produces a small flask, pouring a bit of its contents into her cup.

“Ian, if I may be so bold,” Merrill begins. She looks at Ian with anguish in her large green eyes.

“Please, Merrill, I’ve known you for years. Speak your truth.”

Merrill’s words muddle and hurry while she fidgets with her hands. “You can be...well...you can be quite the force when you want to be. Bethany knew you wouldn’t approve, but she so desperately wanted to learn. She got it in her head that magic was her destiny. I told her  _ no,  _ at first, but she promised to be careful. That is why she wanted to learn from those of us who are more experienced.”

There is a storm threatening to rage inside Ian, but she knows Merrill will not be of help if she’s scared. The woman is somehow a balance of both strong and fragile, and Ian’s need for answers offsets the risk of causing the elf to shut down. “As in, who? Elves?” Ian asks as calmly as she can. 

“Basically, yes.”

“I see. Did you meet together? Where do your groups gather? I need to see them.”

“I...I’m not sure...I…” Merrill stammers.

Ian takes a long, steady breath and shuts her eyes. She finishes her tea and looks at Merrill. “Merrill,” there is a heated waver in her voice that causes the elf’s eyes to widen. “This is serious. Take me there. Now.”

“Of course it is,” she says shaking her head. “But it is not as simple as taking you somewhere. Please, just give me some time and I will get you what you seek.”

“ _ Merrill _ ,” Ian warns.

“I promise Ian,” Merrill pleads. “I will do my best. You just need to give me a little time. Come back in two hours and I will take you.”

Ian sighs and stands. Collecting her hat, she nods as she places it on her head. “Two hours,” she says and leaves Merrill’s home.

She takes the opportunity to seek out past associates, question them on what they’ve seen and heard, but ends up with just more... _ nothing _ . It’s frustrating. She goes through more rolled cigarettes than she would care to admit and finishes her flask of whiskey. 

Those avenues proving fruitless for now, she walks and wanders, aimless at first. At least, that is what she thinks she is doing. She silently nods as passersby greet her and convey their condolences. She sneers and ignores the ignorant who spit foul words. One man yells from the safety of his upper window, “You know what they call a dead witch? A good start!” The words sting against her bubbling rage, but she presses onward.

It isn’t until she stands in the room that she realizes where she went.

Bethany’s lifeless body is gone, but the blood remains. Someone had sloppily attempted to remove the words from the brick, but the stain resides. It stinks and it’s damp and Ian stares at the shadow of where her sister had laid. She crouches over that shadow and places her palm in its center, the spot in which her sister’s heart ceased beating. 

“Oh, Bethany,” she whispers under her breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her heart is labored with regret. She should have paid more attention to her sister. She should have known that Bethany was in danger. She worked so hard to give life she thought her sister wanted. She could have helped her through this. It is unbearable, this feeling of guilt.

Ian pulls a small pocketknife from her trousers. Flicking it open, she brings the blade to her left palm. She closes her eyes and whispers, “I am sorry that I failed you in life, dear sister, but I vow to not fail you in death.” With that, she slices a small cut in her palm. It stings, but she does her best not the give into to the pain and instead relies on her conviction. Gathering a bit of blood on her fingertips, she swipes it across her nose. A public declaration of her quest for vengeance. And with more blood dripping from her hand, she lies it over that place where her sister’s heart last beat.

There is an unexplainable pulse in the air around her. It is electrical. Static. A pinging of energy that Ian focuses through, chalking it up to the strength of her devotion. She’s not sure how long she stays there. Her mind focused on duty and crusades. It is not until after the cut dries, and she hears the voices of others that she is pulled from her trance.

“Miss Hawke.”

Ian stands turns to find an elder elven man, Orsino, standing in the doorway, Merrill hovering close behind. 

“How did you find me?” Ian asks.

Orsino smiles and steps inside. His eyes stop on the blood swiped on her face, his smile falters, but he does not mention it. “Magic can perform wondrous things, Miss Hawke.” When Ian scowls at his comment he hums a nervous laugh. “I am sorry to hear of your sister’s fate. It is a terrible tragedy. She will be widely missed.”

“Where is the rest of your clan, or group, or coven, whatever you call yourselves,” she asks in a harsh tone.

Orsino smiles. “I assure you, it is not as lavish as all that. And no offense, Miss Hawke, but I do not wish to parade those I hold dear around the city at a time like this.”

“So they are aware of the danger?” she asks, a little calmer.

“Yes of course. I’ve urged all that I know to completely refrain from the use of magic until this is resolved. I don’t want to take any chances.”

Ian cocks her brow. “You used it to find me.”

“I was careful.”

Ian grunts and scans the room. “As long as they’re warned. But I would like to know if anyone strange has been bothering them, or if they knew of anyone too interested in my sister.” Peering back at the man, she folds her arms and asks, “What can  _ you  _ tell me of my sister.”

Orsino smiles, his large, green elven eyes shimmering in the low light. “Bethany was a treasure. I had the pleasure of many wonderful talks with her.”

“Where did you meet?”

“At first we met in my home. But you see, Miss Hawke, she wanted to be a dreamer. To walk the Fade. So we soon would meet there, instead. It was safer.” Ian crinkles her expression and glares at the man. “The Fade is what we call the other side. The land of spirits. This is why your Chantry despises us so. The elves have perfected the ability to walk the Fade, and in doing so, your Chantry claims we walk the lands of the Maker and become demons.” He chuckles to himself. “It is absurd, really.”

“You commune with spirits?”

“No, no, no. We commune with each other. Spirits are not to be trusted with a novice, like your sister. Even I tread lightly in that regard.”

“If she preferred to dream, what was she doing here in Lowtown?” Ian asks.

Orsino’s face falls and he shakes his head. “That I cannot tell you. Perhaps she met with more than just the elves. She had a thirst for knowledge.”

Ian sighs with a groan. She pulls a small silver case from her breast pocket along with a box of matches. “Do you have any idea who might be doing this? You mentioned the Chantry despises this ability of yours. Could it be related?” she asks while striking a match and lighting a cigarette produced from her case.

“As severe as our relationship is with them, I have a hard time believing they capable of...this” Orsino waves his hand to the remains of the carnage left in the room. “No.” His tone turns sour. “I think it is one of those beasts that have shoved their way into this city.”

“He means the Qunari,” Merrill says softly.

“Of course I mean the Qunari!” Orsino yells. “They are wretched. Do you know what they do to those who show signs of magic in their country? They sew their mouths shut and leave them to starve! A sanctioned practice under the  _ Qun _ . It is revolting. They are savages. Butchers! If anyone is capable of such wickedness as this, it is them!” Orsino’s rant works him into a state. His chest rises and falls rapidly with his heavy breath.

Ian looks at the blood on the floor, heart heavy. “If you are that passionate about it, it’s worth a visit to their streets.” She moves past the elves, leaving the room and entering the alleyway. She flicks her cigarette into the grime of the ground. “Go home, Mr. Orsino. Stay safe and stay in. Don’t do anything more that could attract attention.” She glances at Merrill. “You too.”

“No,” Merrill says, shaking her head and crossing her arms. She steps beside Ian. “I’m coming with you. You can’t go snooping around those types on your own, and I won’t hear another word about it.” Ian grins down at the shorter woman. Who is she to argue with a determined elf? 

They say their farewells to Orsino and work their way through Lowtown to the streets inhabited by the Qunari settlers. The area is marked by many hanging red banners, tapestries, and lanterns. All of which are marked with the symbol of Par Vollen, their homeland.  It is almost as if these few streets are their own separate entity to the rest of the city. A miniaturized Par Vollen with which even the Viscount doesn’t attempt interference. 

Their people are taller and broader than the rest of the races, with horns that grow from their heads. That is why many call them beasts. Legends and myths surround the mysterious race. One being that they were an experiment gone wrong in someone’s ancient laboratory. Another that an evil conjurer created them for his own pleasure, and that is why they despise magic as they do. 

They are severe in nature with almost permanent scowls on their faces. If it wasn’t for the fact that their women are rarely allowed to leave their homes, and their religion is the most oppressive to Ian’s awareness, she might actually like them.

Ian is no stranger to their streets, though she tries to avoid them when possible. However, she knows precisely where to find the only man who may speak to her at all. The only man permitted to speak with any non-Qun individuals. Their leader. The  _ Arishok _ .

Ian enters a large meeting hall in the center of their main street. Merrill follows close behind, chin held high, but silent. The men inside all fall quiet as the women walk through. Every pair of pearlescent silver eyes fixated on them and sneering, offended that two women just entered their view. Especially offended that one of those women is Ian.

“The woman Hawke,” the Arishok grumbles from his large seat at the end of the hall. He sits on a large stone bench atop a narrow set of stairs. His body is already the largest in the room. The height of his seat only adds to the foreboding, intimidating nature of his presence.

“Why have you come,” he says. “State it quickly before you are thrown from my streets.”

“I wish to be here about as much as you wish me here,” Ian says as she approaches his dais.

“Then speak.”

“The murders. I’m sure you know which ones.” Ian says, stopping at the bottom of the steps.

“Of your city’s filthy bas saarebas, yes, I am aware. Why do you bother me with this, human?” He flits his hand at her dismissively.

“Did you order these killings?” Her chin raises and the man’s frown deepens.

“ _ Ian _ ,” Merrill whispers. “ _ Tact _ .”

“These men have no patience for tact, Merrill. I know the Arishok would rather I get right to it,” Ian says. Her eyes never leave the locked gaze with the man.

The Arishok leans forward. “Your kind think selfishness and want are normal. This city leaves a bad taste. No order, no goal. Your populus is festering with greed and weakness. You will all implode in time, you think I would waste my time ripping your slum’s foul? Your city’s soil is none of my concern.”

“Interesting choice of words, Arishok.  _ Ripping _ . That’s curious. Curious indeed. Don’t you find that curious, Merrill?” She looks down at the elf beside her. Merrill’s eyes are as large as the moons and as worried as a halla cornered by a wolf. 

“Enough with your games, Hawke. I did not order these murders,” the Arishok says.

“Perhaps not you,” Ian says, “but has one of your pets gone rogue?” She glances around at the angry faces in the room. “I do not doubt you know of what transpires in your house. Anything but would be a disservice. So, tell me, do you cover for his sickness?”

“The Qun demands compliance, glory is clear and defined. There is no concept of  _ rogue _ !” He growls his words with thundering power. “You dare walk into my halls and throw accusations?” he yells. “It is your own house that is sick! Your own house that has fallen to the corruption of free will and magic! End your chaos and disorder will cease!”

“Have you come here to proselytize? Perhaps convert the city of Kirkwall, and then perhaps inspire our Ripper?”

“No. Foundering here was unexpected. I have purpose other than watching you rot. But, this city, how long must I let you harm yourselves?” He sits upright and gestures to the door. “I suspect we are done here.”

While Hawke has never had a true grasp on her temper, she usually keeps it in check when she is on the edge of a losing battle. But something comes over her and she loses her control, her quest for vengeance pulling at the strings rather than her brain. “With talk like that, I’m to believe your hands are clean in this? There are none who abhor the conjurers quite as Qunari. None who wish to change our ways quite as Qunari. Is it not possible that one of these sheep of yours has turned to wolf by your hateful preaching?” She begins to pace. “Are you sure your grip is as tight around these cocks as you think?!” 

Ian snarls and points to the men surrounding the room. Their hulking bodies growing closer by the second. “Who killed my sister, Arishok? Do you yet cover for him? If what you say of compliance is truth, he should be punished!”

“Leave,” The Arishok orders, “or I shall remove you.”

“Answer me!” she screams.

At that moment, Ian catches a glimpse of a fist flying in her direction. She ducks and kicks her leg out, colliding it into the groin of her attacker. His body falls backward onto the wooden floor with a crash, but more bodies come stampeding toward her.

She screams for Merrill to run as the men tighten their circle around the women. Ian throws punches and is hit with with theirs. She manages to evade some, but she is being struck hard and plenty. She reaches for the knife in her pocket at the same time that she feels the impact of a fist in her left kidney. Seeing stars, she turns to swipe its blade at the man behind her. She catches sight of Merrill struggling in the hold of another before something hard hits the back of her head…

And everything turns black.


	5. Four

# 

#  Chapter Four

Pain. 

The pain is excruciating. All over her body she feels the ache. However, it is the rough licking of a sandpaper tongue and the loud thrum of purring that’s woken Ian. They call her awake from a catatonic state, those wet tiny bristles scraping her cheek. 

Ian’s eyelids squint and flutter open while she groans through the newly discovered throbbing pain throughout her body. The tabby’s face in hers, she bats the cat off from her chest. It hops down with  _ hmpf _ and struts away, offended by her lack of thanks. 

Ian runs her hands over herself, wincing as she finds many tender spots. Bruises, scratches, and welts that seem to cover her from end to end. Her muscles ache, and her bones feel snapped and brittle. There is a swelling to her face and split to her lip. It is as if she’s one swift kick from death.

Her mind slowly follows her consciousness, and she discovers herself in a bed and room that is not her own. Her back is slightly raised from the mattress, propped up with a few pillows. The bed’s footboard, and a chair beside it, hold her dirty, bloody clothing. She is dressed in a slightly baggy and not very clean undershirt, though her undergarments are her own. And there are bandages wrapped around her ribs and both of her hands. The knuckles of which are bloody, soaked through the tattered strips of cotton.

She takes in the rest of her surroundings. Dingy. Dark. Damp. The stale smell of mold and mildew hangs in the air. Not a single window, just a smattering of candles and lanterns placed throughout. There is a desk across the room that is cluttered with books, odd instruments, jars, and beakers. 

She knows this room. She knows it well. Reality settles in like an old friend who is no longer welcome, her heart plummeting beneath the bed as it does. Her mind and heart both pacing with anxious questions on how she got here, of all places. She considers bolting from the room, but the pain in her body keeps her planted firmly in the old familiar bed, dread of what will come next consuming her.

But it all stops cold when the old wood-slat door to the room opens. Involuntarily, her breath chokes in her throat when she sees him. 

Dirty blonde long hair has fallen from its binding behind his head and tangles in a short beard on his chin. A straggly little thing that is unkempt due to his priorities in science over appearance. There is a point to his nose and a strength to his jaw that compliment the severity of his expression. Lost in thought, as always, he is surely scheming his next idea to save the sick and the dying in Kirkwall.

There is something beautiful about that way he sterns his face when he thinks. There always has been...

His clothes are old. Almost centuries old. A sad linen shirt hangs loosely from his chest, stitches meant to fix holes and rips hold the thing together more than anything else. His coat is dark and long and covered in patches of dust and dirt, matching his tattered dark trousers. They are items he found scavenging, no doubt, The man cares to only spend money on his herbs and his books and the other things that clutter his workspaces. 

“Oh,” he says, glancing up from some vials in his hands. “You’re up. That’s an improvement, I suppose.” He walks over, unphased by her shock and confusion, and sets the vials down on a small table beside the bed. “Though, I admit it’s only good for you and not so much for me.” He scratches his cheek through his beard and skews his face. “Now I suppose I will have to speak with you.” Sighing, he crosses his arms while looking down at her with that stern and skewed expression.

“Anders,” Ian says, although her voice is not but a puff of breath. It has been so long since she’s laid eyes on the man that she feels everything from excited, to scared, to tense, and angry.

“Well, your mind is intact, it seems. I suppose that is good, too. Also,  _ only for you _ .”

“How long was I out?” she asks softly, still in disbelief by the entire situation.

“Through the night. Although, I gave you a little something to ensure that be the case. It’s obvious you’ve not had proper rest in a long time,” he says with a roll to his eyes.

Ian glances down at the old bed on which she lies. It’s his bed in his bedroom, not a cot where he places his clinic’s patients. “Where did you sleep?” she asks. “If I’m here for care, why not place me in one of your sick beds?”

Anders fidgets and clears his throat. “You had open wounds, I didn’t want to chance you contracting an infection from the other rooms.” He darts his eyes away and points the opposite direction. “I slept at my desk. It was no matter. I’ve done it before.”

She smiles a tiny, short-lived grin. “Not the first time, certainly not the last. But how did I get here?”

“What do you last remember?”

“I was in the hall of the Arishok...there was a brawl.”

Anders chuckles deep in his chest and turns to the vials on the table. He mixes the different contents into a small glass. “I think a brawl constitutes something a bit more involved than one stupid woman getting almost beaten to death.” He scowls and shakes his head while pushing the glass of freshly mixed liquids into her hand. “Why would you go in there carrying on about murder? Do you have a death wish?”

Ian sits up fully, careful not to spill the glass as well as cause the least amount of pain from her injuries. “You haven’t told me how I ended up here,” she says. “What is this? One of your elixirs?”

“It is. A new one I’ve been perfecting,” he says with a bit of pride. The man has always enjoyed discovering new forms medicine. “Drink it. It should dull your pain and speed your healing considerably. I will give you more to take home when you leave.” He gestures for her to bring the glass to her lips. “I will answer you once you are properly medicated.”

“Why? Will this knock me out?” She smiles a lopsided thing before she drinks it down. The contents are bitter and horrid, but she swallows it all without complaint.

“I wish,” he says. A tiny reciprocated smirk flashes as he takes the glass from her hand. “Merrill came running in here, raving about how you had been beaten. Two men she found in Lowtown carried you in. I paid them to leave as well as for their silence.” His tone drops. “A payment I would like to see returned to me. I am not your keeper anymore.”

Ian grunts. “You were never my keeper.”

Anders sighs and finds a reason to cross the room. He begins to fiddle with items on his desk as he grumbles. “Yes, you made that abundantly clear.”

“Oh, please. Do not pretend to be hurt after all this time.” Her words sting even herself, but it is nothing compared to the pain already shrieking inside her body. “And remember, my dear Anders, you acted first. You know the rules of Lowtown. You hurt me, I hurt you. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Anders slams his fists on the desk. The collection of glass bottles, beakers, and who knows what else ring and clank. “What you did destroyed me!” he yells through gritted teeth and silence follows. He remains with his back to her, shoulders rising and falling rapidly. It is a flaring temper that splits in a way she’s all too familiar.

Ian decides it’s time to leave. As fun as it is dredging up the past, there are more important matters. She eases her legs from the sheets to the floor and pulls off her draped trousers from the foot of the bed. “I suppose I should be thanking you for tending to me. Given your animosity, you may well have left me for dead.”

“You could, but we both know you wouldn’t mean it.”

“Give me a little credit,” she says with a groan, and she slips on her shoes.

Anders turns to face her again, and leans back on the desk. “I can’t. I know you too well for that.” 

Ian grunts and reaches for her shirt and vest draped over the nearby chair. She winces at the pain the movement causes, but she can tell that it is far duller than before. His new elixir seems to be working quickly.

“Ian…” he says and she freezes. It is the first time she’s heard her name from his lips in what feels like the turn of the ages. Ancient suppressed emotions threaten to release themselves from their purgatory. 

“Ian, I’m very sorry to hear of what happened to Bethany. I know what this must do to you, and I know you will not share it. Just understand, her loss is felt throughout the city...and deeply with me.” He runs his hands through his hair, smoothing back the pieces that fell from their binding. “She was like a sister to me too, after all… For a time, anyway.”

Ian swallows her emotions and finishes dressing. In doing so, she stares at the long-faded design on a rug in his room. “Did you know what she was?”

“I had suspicions. She came to me once, asking questions about magic and the healing arts. But when I pressed for the source of her investigation, she seemed to panic. She found cause to leave, and I never saw her again after that.” Anders tugs at a gold loop in his ear, and his voice trails far away. After a few thought filled seconds, he takes a deep breath, his mind returning from whence it came. “If I had actually known anything. I would have told you.”

Ian runs her fingers through her own hair. It feels cleaned. He took the time to clean her and bandage her wounds, yet he rarely shows himself the courtesy. A sad and tired tingle sets in her chest. “I know,” she says.

They stand there in his room, and somehow their eyes find each other. They do not smile. They do not speak. They just stand there in the thick, heavy air. His eyes are blue for all the gold in the iris. Her heart aches for those eyes. They once sparkled like the sun. They once held shimmers of hope in their intricate and beautiful gilded bands. 

However, the world is too harsh for hope, and his bright eyes are clouded. No more of the sun, not since she helped spur the rain. 

It is too hard to look at him. The pain is too great. It’s why she’s stayed away for so long. But she has the incredible urge to walk the few paces needed to close the distance between them. It wouldn't take much, just a little momentum. 

How badly she wants to run to him...tell him how foolish she was, and ask for reconciliation. 

An impossible desire, truly. This life is not kind to lovers. It is too complicated, too dangerous. They were as cursed then as they will be forever. People such as they are not rewarded the happy endings. It is best to not make matters worse. It is best that she leave, and leave now, rather than hurt their broken hearts any further.

She tries to find the sounds to say goodbye, when something in his eyes makes her throat trip. A flicker in the dulled and clouded gold, something perhaps triggered by his own lost thoughts.

It is no matter what spiral his mind may travel, however, because Merrill’s voice hollers from beyond Anders’ bedroom door. The elf runs inside before either Ian or Anders can react, and she falls limp against the doorknob. While desperately trying to catch her breath, she manages to say, “Good...you’re awake...there was another...dead...last night.”

Ian shoots a look toward Anders. The disappointment is almost  _ too _ apparent in his face for her to stand. “Go,” he says. “I know you won’t listen if I ask you to stay...out of this. So just go.” He grabs a small bottle from his desk with one hand and hers with the other. The touch of his skin is enough to make her heart break, if it was not already broken. 

Anders shoves the bottle into her palm and says, “Another dose, take this in a couple of hours.” Ian half-nods, grabs her coat, and walks out the door. 

She never did find the sounds that say goodbye.

“I will send the rest of the elixir to your estate,” Anders calls out after her. Ian swallows the emotion that built so quickly in that old, damp room. She steels herself, and with Merrill by her side, works her way though Anders’ clinic. 

It is a small series of old corridors that the man claimed in the pits of Darktown. There, he can tend to his experiments and the sick who live in the slums, without interruption or snooping by the authorities. 

One will never find a guardsman in Darktown, because those who call it home are the forgotten ones. The poor wretches that are plagued with illness and curse. The souls who dare not walk the streets of even Lowtown for fear of a mob’s attack. Instead, they reside in the dark depths and caverns below the city. An old connection to the sewers where the only light comes from small fires or candles lit beside their mud-caked bodies. The only persons found there beyond its residents are the odd runaway criminal, or the truly desperate seeking Anders’ aid.

The women climb their way out of Darktown, each step of Ian’s feeling a little stronger than the previous. She follows the woman through the early morning ruckus of Lowtown. When they come upon the scene of the murder, it is a far different scenario than that of Bethany’s. Instead of just guardsmen milling about, there is a mob of people. Varric has more than one of his men with a camera, recording the events in still pictures, and the town’s official tribune is in attendance as well.

So much for Aveline’s wish to keep it all under wraps.

Not that that had worked anyway.

She finds the redheaded Captain in the center of the horde. She is towering over Varric with anger writ throughout her body.

“The people have a right to know!” Varric's protests carry over the sounds of the yelling mob. There is a mixture of horrified cries, hateful accusations toward conjurers, and blame thrown around for everyone from the Qunari to the Viscount himself.

Ian uses the chaos as covered distraction and is able to slip behind Aveline without notice. When she enters the scene, there is a rank smell of death. Either the night was warmer than the previous, or this body sat longer before discovery, or both. The victim is another woman, unknown to Ian. Same cuts to the gut and throat as Bethany, but also her hands are missing.

The blood is sloppier than before. It seems to be everywhere in the small enclave where the body lies slumped partly upright against the wall. The same words are painted in the the victim's blood, but the addition of crudely drawn horns are added at the top, flanking the hate.

“I knew it was them beasties!” a shrill yell filters in from the street. 

Ian holds a kerchief to her nose while she surveys the area. Aveline is soon on her heels, however, and her angry voice disrupts Ian’s inspection.

“What are you doing here, Hawke. Leave my crime scene at once,” Aveline says.

“I am trying to solve this, same as you.”

Aveline’s shrewd stare scrutinizes the healing cuts and bruises on Ian’s face, and she shakes her head. “What you are doing, or what you have already done, is making a dire situation even worse. I know you have a sense of entitlement with the events in this city, but I will not have the investigation botched by your meddling. Leave, and leave it alone, Hawke.” Aveline points to the street and the mob hollering on it. “Go now, or I will lock you up.”

Ian places her hands in the air and backs out of the enclave. Bumping into Varric once in the street, the dwarf says, “Ah, don’t mind Red. She’s just feeling this case pretty hard. It’s the worst string of crimes since she took over as Guard Captain.” He smiles up at her, but the smile vanishes faster than it appeared. “Andraste’s ass, if this is what you look like after Anders’ help, I’m glad I didn't see you before...I'm not sure I could have handled it.” A stout finger lifts the the wool of her coat as he peers at it, then drops it back in place. “You should look into changing, Hawke,” he says gruffly and begins to push through the mob.

She follows Varric, and Merrill follows her, and the three head directly to The Hanged Man. They take seat in a secluded booth in the tavern, heads hanging low. They all order a meal while Merrill and Varric tell Ian about the uprising of violence in Lowtown’s streets. Those suspected of magic get bricks through their windows and graffiti slopped on their doors. Even people who are related to conjurers are under attack. Fist fights have been breaking out across the city and hostile fingers point at everyone for blame.

“It’s mayhem, the city guard can barely keep up,” Merrill says. “The Qunari are getting the worst of it. After we got you out of there, people started trying to set fires to their homes and threw stones at their heads. It became so bad so quickly that the Arishok has closed off their district completely. It is barricaded and guarded. No one beside those under the Qun may enter, and no one inside may leave.”

A silence washes over the table. Repeatedly, the dwarf and the elf look at each other, glance at Ian, then back to their morning meal of tavern porridge and black ale. Ian watches these glances with an eyebrow cocked, until she demands an explanation. Fed-up with the silence, she drops her spoon in her meal and leans back in their booth, arms crossed. “Alright. What is it? Out with it, the both of you,” she says flatly.

They look at each other silently. Varric sighs. “Listen, Hawke,” he begins.

“What you did was careless,” Merrill interrupts. Her anger is startling. “Storming in there, not asking questions, but strictly accusing. You not only risked the investigation, but you risked your life...and mine!”

Ian dips her head and fiddles with her spoon. “I should not have let you come. Something...something took hold of me. I had no control on my temper.”

Merrill growls in frustration. “If I had  _ not  _ been there, you’d be dead!”

“I think Aveline is right, Hawke. You’re too close to this, you’re not thinking straight. You’re a hard-headed son-of-a-bitch, but you aren’t usually  _ that  _ reckless,” Varric says.

“If we hadn’t been so close to an entrance to Darktown, if I hadn’t enlisted the help of those men… Ian, I’m not sure what would have become of you.” Merrill stares down at her porridge, and wipes a tear from her eye before it can fall.

Varric reaches across the table and places a hand over Ian’s. “Maybe you should go home, Hawke. Have you even taken a moment to mourn? Go be with your family. The rest of us will handle this. We won’t rest until the man is in irons.”

Ian shakes her head. “No. My sister was taken because of this, I can’t just sit back and wait. There must be something--”

“Go home. I promise I will make sure any new information I find gets to you. The best you can do is go home. You look like shit, and I bet you feel even worse.” The dwarf urges her, and cocks his head toward the doorway. “Go. Let us take care of you, for once in your miserable life.”

“This is ridiculous. You can take care of me by supporting me in this!” Ian feels her skin turn hot. She pulls the bottle Ander’s gave her from her coat. “This shit is healing me quickly. I will be as strong as ever soon and ready to get back on the streets!”

Merrill refuses speak or lift her gaze from her meal. Varric nods toward the door again and pats Ian’s hand. Neither friend giving into her demands.

“Go,” Varric says again.

“This is bullshit. Fine. If you will not help, then I will go elsewhere,” she grumbles and stands. No support will be found in this tavern. For now, anyway. She’s angry. Disappointed. Wounded even, that her friends have so little faith in her anymore. 

Varric groans and rolls his neck. “Not somewhere else, Hawke. Home. Go home.”

Ian glares at the two of them, but they will not look at her. Storming to the exit of the tavern, her fury and frustration bellowing inside her, she decides that if nothing else, she will change, bathe, and find another dose of Anders’ elixir. Then, perhaps she can walk the streets again with less push-back.

She leaves the tavern, walking into the early afternoon sun filtering down through the smog of chimneys. She walks only a few paces before she hears a swift whistle in her direction. Turning her head to the source, she finds a woman leaning in the alley beside the tavern.

“There is a bloodlust to you. Is there not, Miss Hawke?” the woman asks. 

Ian peers through a squinted stare at the woman. “What of it?”

“There is magic in you, yes? I can feel it. Yet you have not used it? Perhaps not ever, am I right?”

“You are a brazen woman to bring forth that kind of talk so openly in Lowtown.”

“Forgive me,” the woman says and steps forward from the shadows of the alley while outstretching her gloved hand. “My name is Grace, and I think I can help you.” In the light, Ian notices the woman is well dressed for lurking the darkness of slum alleyways.

Ian stares at the woman’s hand with great suspicion. She lets it wait for her, and instead of taking it, crosses her arms. “And how do you think you will help me?”

Grace smiles and leans on an odd looking cane. It appears more decorative than useful, with a blue sparkling crystal at its tip and blue vines curling around a dark metal shaft. “By showing you what your power can bring. These people you speak to, they are too afraid to do what needs to be done, but you are not. The gift of enlightenment in inside you, you just have to take it.”

Ian is in no mood for frilly speech. She cocks her head in annoyance. “Speak plainly, Miss Grace.”

“Perhaps it is better to show you.” She angles to invite Ian in following her back into the alley.

Ian chortles incredulously. “Follow you into darkness? How do I know you will not trick me once off the street?”

Grace chuckles. “Oh dear, Miss Hawke.” She points a lacy finger at Ian’s face. “Even without your proof of muscle so clearly on your exterior, you reputation precedes you. I would be a fool to think you could be matched by any thug I may find in this slum. No, all I wish to do is to help.” She points her strange cane down the alley. “Will you allow it? At least let me show you what I can do to facilitate your endeavours, and then you may decide for yourself if you wish to pursue them.”

Ian gestures for the lady to lead the way, and cautiously follows her into the darkness.

They navigate the alleys and corridors through the backs and sides of buildings, until the woman of fine clothing and fancy canes leads Ian into the pits of Darktown. 

“What is a woman of your means doing associating with anything down here?” asks Ian as they descend a ladder into the lowest slum.

“What my company does is not fit for the open world, Miss Hawke. Darktown is the safest place to conduct our business without discovery. Our client base is strictly invitation only, and I’m afraid you must agree to never speak of this place or else it will vanish from your grasp entirely.”

“Vanish? You would move your operation just because I told one person of it?”

Grace chuckles amusedly. “Oh my dear, you have so much to learn, and I’m afraid no time to learn it.” She reaches the end of a corridor. There is no exit, just a dead end space. Ian starts to reach for her knife and looks over her shoulder, feeling as though she has been duped after all. But just as she is about to yell for the meaning of this, Grace walks through the wood slats that make up the wall - as if they were not there at all. Ian stands stunned. Staring at the wood where Grace once stood before the woman’s lacy gloved hand appears from through the wall, finger beckoning. “Come, Miss Hawke. It is not far now.”

Ian steps forward, staring at the wood, and hesitantly reaches out to touch it. Her hand slides past it without incident, and shocked, she steps through fully. On the other side she finds herself on a bridge of sorts, Grace a few paces ahead. 

Ian looks over the edge of the bridge only to find complete blackness beneath her. No water. No rock. Just nothingness. There are walls on either side of the bridge where hundreds of strange trinkets and treasures hang. Posters and baubles. Dried flowers and clothing. Equipment and gemstones. Everything one may think of embedded in or hanging from the walls in such abundance that Ian cannot be sure what lies beneath.

“This way, Miss Hawke, come along,” Grace calls from the edge of the bridge. Ian walks along the wood slats as if her feet do not trust her mind. When she nears the end of the bridge - were a few wooden steps lead to some kind of dais and some kind of shrine atop it - Grace smiles and swings her hand toward it. “This is my associate, Xenon the Antiquarian. Welcome to the Black Emporium, Miss Hawke.”

“The what? I’ve never heard of such a place,” Ian says. Her eyes scan the surroundings past the dais. A tiny bear putters about. A little nug scurries away. A young boy stands silently in the corner. But oddest of the oddities, the associate Grace claims is no more than a skeleton set in a glass case with even more items strewn around it.

Grace giggles. “No, Miss Hawke, you wouldn’t have. Remember this place is of the highest secrecy.” She looks at her skeleton friend and says, “Mr. Xenon, will you not greet our guest?”

To Ian’s shock, a voice carries through the hall. It is not as if the skeleton’s jaw moves, no, but the voice of an elderly man echoes around them. “Ah yes, welcome my child. Few people are worthy of an invitation, you know. They search the sewers for the emporium and accost poor urchin. And I tell urchin to say, 'No! You are not worthy. Starve in the sewers!' Except urchin never speaks."

“Excuse me?” Ian asks, her mind can barely keep up with what has happened in the past few minutes.

“Come, Miss Hawke. I have yet to show you the true reason why I’ve brought you.” Grace walks around the glassed Xenon, and Ian follows her into a room behind a red velvet curtain. Inside, there are plush chaise lounges paired with small tables and ornate pipes. Some of these lounges have men lying upon them, the smoke from their pipes fog the air and they lie limp amongst crushed velvet and pillows.

“What is this place?” Ian asks.

“This is where you will find your answers. A spirit called to me this night last. It wishes to commune with you, Miss Hawke. It knows of your dire need for answers. Answers you have yet to find.”

“If this spirit has the answers, why did it not tell you?”

Grace smiles again. The woman seems coy and conniving by nature, and Ian does not trust her. “That is the way of spirits, my dear. They only speak to those they desire.”

“And all of this?” Ian asks pointing to the lounges and pipes and smoke.

“This will facilitate your communion in the quickest way possible for one of your...novice… abilities.”

“You are telling me that if I smoke from your pipe, I can speak with a spirit who will aid me to find my sister’s killer? You have a special way of conjuring, hidden here in the depths of who-knows-where in Darktown?”

“Yes.”

“But the other conjurers, could they not ask or seek these spirits for answers as well?” Ian asks.

“As I said before, Miss Hawke. Spirits are fickle, but they are also under estimated. That Orsino you spoke to, or that Merrill of which you are befriended, they lack the will required for such an endeavour. They do not respect the spirits, and the spirits do not come to them.”

Ian would be bothered by how much this stranger knows of her, if it weren’t for everything else surrounding the mysterious woman as well. As it is, it’s just another layer of strange to an already boggling day. “I’m finding this all to be a bit bizarre, Miss Grace,” she says.

“The matter of importance is not of your knowledge on what conjurers are or are not capable of, Miss Hawke, but of what you are capable of with the aid of just a little lyrium.”

“Lyrium? That is highly addictive and dangerous.”

“I assure you, you are safe in my care. Do these men appear in peril?” She gestures to those partaking, all seem relaxed and at peace. “Now, I told you I would show you why I found you, but it is up to you to take the offer.”

Ian ponders and stares at her surroundings. Her heart thumps in her chest. If what this woman says is true, Ian cannot in good conscience ignore the offer. If there is an entity on the other side that wishes to help her, she must find it. She must find her sister’s killer, no matter the cost to herself.

“Alright, Grace,” Ian says. “Set me up.”

Grace clasps her hands together in glee, a sentiment that is still unsettling to Ian, but she pushes through the warnings in her mind to the authenticity of this woman’s intentions and follows her to a chaise.

Grace teaches her how to use the instruments provided, showing her the proper methods of filling, holding, and lighting the lyrium. “This is a special blend of lyrium I engineered to enhance the mind. Even the magically inept may travel the Fade with a bit of this in their lungs. You are all set now, Miss Hawke. Happy travels, and I hope you find the answers you seek.”

Left to find her way through this murky endeavour, Ian lies back on pillows and brings the pipe to her lips. The smoke feels cool to the lungs, almost as if ice dances through her body. It is a pleasant sensation that is immediately calming. She exhales and watches blueish-tinted smoke rise in the air. She feels her head floating. She feels relaxed. Another inhale, and another layer of sparkling frost throughout her body. This time when she exhales, the smoke glitters and swirls around her in a beautiful array of blue shine. Ian smiles and lies back, watching the twinkling dance above her. She smokes from the pipe one more time before that smoky display completely envelops her. The room falls away, in fact she forgets of its existence altogether.

The blue glitter swirls through the fog until it creates a shape, solidifying into a shining form of a blue velvet cloak. The hooded figure stands with its back to her and Ian’s heart races.

Bethany.

_ Bethany _ .

“Bethany!” Ian yells and reaches for the velvet. She begins to remember her purpose for this exploration as tears stream down her cheeks. “Bethany, was it you? Did you send that woman to me? Did you hear me call to you in that room? Oh Bethany, look at me!”

The hooded head turns to look over her shoulder, and Bethany’s golden eyes gleam in Ian’s direction. She does not speak, instead Bethany walks away. Ian calls out to her again and attempts to chase after her through the blue fog. As she breaks through the haze, she finds herself in the streets of the Qunari district. It is dark and quiet. The blue fog settles low over the mud of the street. Red candles glow in a scattering of windows, but only the moon lends any light to see. Ian spins around, screaming her sister’s name, until she spots a glimpse of the blue cloak disappearing through a doorway. 

She runs, and mud from wet streets splashes. She reaches the doorway and yanks it open. “Bethany!” Her voice echoes in the hall, it is dark and still inside as she enters. She soon realizes that it is the hall of the Arishok, though it seems empty, at first. The ground squishes below her feet, and looking down she sees that she walks on a blood soaked rug.

“Bethany, are you here?” she asks into the silent hall. Each step is wet and clomping. She tries not to look down at the blood, and she tries not to notice the dead qunari bodies lining the walls, their lives pooling together to form the carnage beneath her feet. 

A flash of blue dips through a back door, and Ian runs. She runs and blood splashes over the mud splattered on her clothing. She runs until she trips and falls, slamming into the wet rug and coating herself in red from toe to face. She turns to see from what she’d tripped, only to find her own dead eyes staring back at her. Her body crumpled and beaten and dead.

Ian would scream if she were the type, but her heart swallows her fear, and her wind had been knocked from her. She scrambles backward, her eyes fixed on the dead ones. She scrambles until she hits the steps to the Arishok’s dais, where she is able to lift herself back to her feet and carefully walk back toward the door where her sister vanished. Her stare still on her own, she watches until the dead version of herself is out of sight.

“Bethany!” she yells again as she stumbles backward through the door, stumbling into a street in hightown, her sister’s blue cloak quickly climbing the stairs to the Grand Cathedral’s doors. Ian calls out again and again, but Bethany keeps climbing and does not respond, she does not look back, she does not stop.

As Ian follows frantically until she is halted by a dagger to her throat and a strong arm pinning both of hers behind her back. A woman walks in front of her, dressed in a long black cloak that is hooded, shielding her face. Long blonde hair drapes down their chest, and she lifts her pale hands to drop the hood from her head. Aged but still stunningly beautiful, eyes as bright as pure lyrium, she stares into Ian with a menacing glare. 

Ian struggles in the hold of a man much stronger than she, the blade of his dagger cutting tiny, painful slices into her neck each time she jerks her body.

The woman brings a sword from beneath her cloak and lights it aflame. She slowly points the flaming sword toward Ian’s chest, stopping at the location of her panic-stricken heart. The heat of the flames is excruciating, and Ian feels he skin begin to blister under the flame. She struggles harder to be freed from the man's grasp, the knife cutting deeper into her neck, but he hold her firm. His own hand does not scorch as she does, for his is protected with thick gloves.

“Blood,” the woman says and presses the sword’s point to Ian’s chest. “Blood is what I seek. When you give in, I tell all.”

“What do you mean?” Ian screams, the pain is too much to bear and she begins to wish for death. “Did you kill my sister?”

The woman presses the sword into Ian’s chest slowly and the shock of the hot blade pushing through her ribs stops Ian’s mind. Her struggles cease and her body falls limp into her captor's arms. She feels herself sinking to the ground, her eyes staring at the glare from the woman through the flames engulfing the sword and now herself. The woman presses the sword deeper, pushing the blade into Ian’s heart and she starts choking on her own blood, coughing it up violently and helplessly. The man behind her releases her, and Ian falls to the ground.

The man who’d held her watches as she bleeds and burns, his amber eyes devoid of emotion. The icy gaze of the woman beside him pierces her, her voice low and foreboding. “Your blood, Marian Hawke. Do not return without it.”

That is the last she hears, the last she sees, before death consumes her.


	6. Five

# 

#  Chapter Five 

When Ian wakes from her lyrium induced nightmare, her body springs forward coughing and gasping for air. The feeling of her flesh crisping and burning still terrifies her skin. She swats her hands to put out a fire that is not there, and then grasps her heart to stop blood from pouring out a wound that is also not there. Still coughing she reaches for her neck, but there are no cuts or slices striped across it. She heaves and sputters, and tears fall down her face that mix with sweat and coat her frantic hands. 

“Help,” she croaks. Then she says it again and again, unable to comprehend what’s happened.

A door swings open and Anders is by her side in an instant. He drops to his knees, his hands pulling hers from her neck while shushing her, and then cupping her face. It is an action that would bring her a jarring comfort if not for her hysteria. 

“Ian. Ian. Ian,” Anders softly cooes. “Calm yourself. You’re safe. You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

“Anders? How? Where?” are the only words she’s able to say, her breath and heart are thundering too rapidly for anything else. It is amazing she was able to say anything at all.

“You were smashing through Darktown screaming until you landed at my doorstep. Do you not remember? You were inconsolable, Ian. Terrified and screaming about burning alive. Calling out for Bethany.” Anders smoothes her sweat laden hair away from her face. There is a softness in his touch and his dull-gold eyes. “What happened to you?” he says so sweetly, so full of warmth that Ian inhales a strong breath and starts down a path of composure.

“Saw her. Bethany,” she says, though most of her words are still unwilling to form sentences.

“Bethany? How is that possible? Ian, what did you do?”

“Lyrium,” she breathes.

“Lyrium,” he says curtly. Anders expression falls from that of worry into one of anger. As his frown sinks, her heart sinks along with it. His soft touch abruptly ends. Returned is the cold edge she’s felt from him for so long. “ _ Lyrium? _ What were you doing with lyrium?” he says and glares at her, his eyes resembling more of coal than of the sun than ever before. She finds herself dearly missing the Anders of a few seconds past.

“A spirit was reaching out to me, to tell me of Bethany. I think it  _ was  _ Bethany,” she says ardently. “She wants to tell me who the Ripper is, but I couldn’t get to her.”

“A spirit…” Anders stands and sits on the bed beside her. “What was said to you, Ian? Tell me now, and tell me true.” 

“There wasn’t much,” she lies. Ian does not wish to erupt into an argument with the man. “I was only trying to follow Bethany before I woke here.”

“You’re lying. What did the spirit do to you? Why were you screaming?” 

She can’t tell him. They will only explode into a fight that she wants no part of. “I don’t know, I became caught in something. But I saw her, Anders. She was leading me.”

“She was leading you,” he says with a shake to his head and an annoyed laugh under his breath. He flexes his fingers, forming and releasing fists repeatedly. “You reckless woman.” Turning his gaze to her, he glares. “You know nothing of spirits, yet you play in their world. That was no spirit, Ian. Spirits do not  _ call to people to have little chats _ . That was surely a demon.” Anders stands and paces the room. “I don’t know how  _ you  _ \- someone who never cared about magic - could possibly call upon the attention of a demon. A  _ demon _ , Ian!” He halts his pacing to turn to her. “Do you understand how dangerous they are?”

“Whatever it is, it’s going to tell me who is killing in Lowtown, Anders. Why wouldn’t you support this? You of all people!” 

“Demons lie, Ian!” he yells. “ _ Of all people _ ?” Anders continues with a harsh tone that makes the hairs on her neck stand upright, “You would think,  _ of all people _ , that  _ you  _ would be wary of spirits, but a demon?” There is a flash of brightness in his eyes, an icy blue glow to his veins as his temper splits.

Ian is unphased by his anger, however. It is the same old, same old. The pompous rage of a man who always thinks he knows better. Her chin lifts and her body steels itself. “I will do whatever it takes to avenge my sister’s murder.”

“No,” he orders - a fact that makes her blood boil. “No, you will not. You cannot. This thing is evil, Ian.”

“I don’t understand why you are not more willing to support whatever it takes to save your own people! Conjurers are brutally dying!” she yells.

“Listen to me!” His frustration releases blue-lightning that cracks through the damp air of his room. “It only wants your life. It cares nothing for your sister, it cares nothing for you, it cares nothing for the murderer. It will only feed on your vengeance.” He runs his hands through his hair and paces the room again. He paces and paces, and his skin pulses that blue glow while his body is rigid and tense. A sight that once scared her, but now only hardens her resolve. She will not budge on this.

Anders looks at her and somehow the anger fades from his eyes. Slowly, he steadies himself and breathes through controlled breaths. The blue glow fades. He regains composure. Ian watches as he stares at her. She holds her chin high, not a modicum of submission to her, no matter how his temper had flared. No matter how his softness returns. 

Anders approaches her side on the bed again, and grabbing a cloth on the table, he pats sweat from her brow. “Do you so quickly forget how you just woke?” he asks. “You were in a lyrium nightmare, Ian. No benevolent spirit would put you through that.”

Ian pushes his hand away, he cannot so quickly comfort her again. “Do not pretend that you care. She was showing me clues, I know she was. I need to see more.”

“What you need to do is rest, Ian. Even with my medicines, your body needs time to recover. You are putting too much stress on yourself.” There is a tone in his voice that pains Ian’s chest, but she covers it up with a scoffing sound. Anders inhales deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose. “What were the clues?”

“The Qunari district,” she says. “And then the Chantry. I was trying to follow Bethany into the Grand Cathedral when everything stopped...changed.” She decides it still not best to go into the the true details of her visions.

Anders scowls. “The Chantry.” He says it as if the words alone leave a foul taste in his mouth. “If nothing else, their indifference to the hate their speech incurs is enough to lay blame at their door. The Grand Cleric should at least speak out against the murders, and yet she’s been silent.” He stares at the rug on his bedroom floor, and Ian watches as he loses himself in thought. 

After a few long moments, he swallows hard. Not looking at her, he says, “Of course I care.”

“What?”

He glances at her through the side of his eye. “No one infuriates me the way you do, Marian Hawke. I hate you. I hate what you do to me. I hate how you've stormed into my life again.” His hands wring together and she watches the flair of white in his clenching knuckles.

“You flatter me,” she says flatly.

A small puff of laugh chokes through him. “Without you, my world makes sense. I live here. I help who I can. It just flows. Easy. I have purpose. Then, you.” He looks at her. “You turn it all upside down. Everything...chaos.” He shakes his head and stares again at the floor. 

“You should not be involved in this,” Ian says. She should not have come to him. She’s not sure why she did. It has been more than a year since she last saw the man, yet now she’s woken in his bedroom twice in two days. Involving him at all not only puts him in danger, his mood is too fragile for it. He cannot hide who he is as easily as others. Even if he is mostly ignored in Darktown, if he leaves, or if she brings enough attention upon him… 

No matter how much she hates him at times, she cannot see harm brought to him. Not ever.

“No,” he says, snapping his gaze back to hers. “You don't understand. I...”

“I should go,” Ian says. “This shouldn’t be your fight. I apologize for landing on your doorstep...again.” She stands and collects her things, shoving her feelings down deep and focusing on her conviction instead. “It will not happen a third time, I assure you.” 

“Ian, wait. I'm trying to tell you, albeit poorly, but I…”

She ignores him and the ache it gives her body to do so, and opens his bedroom door. With one final glance before leaving she says, “Stay in Darktown. I like to think that you’re still safe down here.” 

Anders says nothing more beyond a furrow in his brow, and a sadness in his eyes as they cast downward back to the rug.

As Ian walks through the dark pits of Darktown, her mind whirls. She tries to remember the details of her nightmare. Bethany brought her to the Qunari Hall. Perhaps she was right after all. Qunari may well be involved. She ignores the fact that all she saw was death in that hall, including her own, and works her way through the old tunnel district to an opening near the Qunari streets.

Emerging in Lowtown, she finds Qunari guards blocking the road to the Arishok’s hall. They have barricaded it with a crude gate-type structure with two men standing stoically menacing in front of it. Ian approaches, taking steady breaths as their silver eyes focus on her.

“I need to speak with the Arishok,” she says. 

Neither man responds. One curls his lip into a snarl, and they both look down the street behind her.

“Do you hear me, beasts? Let me pass.”

“No one is to enter our streets by order of the Arishok,” the other says. “Especially the woman Hawke. You have desecrated our land for the last time.”

“Leave,” the first one says. “If you do not, we will be moved to your injury.”

Ian attempts to push past the men and open the gate, but two strong Qunari hands grab hold of her arms and throw her backwards into the mud. One of the men takes slow steps toward her, saying nothing more than his stern silver glare easily conveys. Ian snarls at the man fearlessly as he looms above her. “The Qun cares not for your wickedness, human,” he says, then walks back to his post.

Ian rises - a little wobbly - and attempts to shake mud from her coak. Looking down at herself she sees what disarray she’s in. Mud, blood, rips, tears. The past two days events are shamefully splayed across her clothes. With a huff, she sneers at the men and walks from the gate to wander the streets back toward hightown. 

Her head's splitting in pain. The thoughts of lyirum sing in her mind. She runs her fingers over what is left of the small cuts and bumps on her face, little indications of her folly residing after Anders’ elixir. She’s tired. Fatigued. And sore all over. Her mind jumps around from wanting to sleep for a week, to finding that lyrium den, to finding a way to break into the Qunari compound.

On the outskirts of Hightown, Ian runs her hands through a small fountain in the center of one of the finer markets in the city. She runs her wet hands through her hair, over her face, and blinks tiny water droplets from her eyelashes. The cool water is refreshing, lending a momentary release to the pain in her mind, body, and heart. She grunts at offended ladies shopping in the square, their shock and distaste for Ian’s visage made vocal through gasps and offended mumbling.

Perhaps if they gave a damn about who is killing their brothers and sisters, they may look tattered too.

Ian sighs and rolls her neck. She arches her back and stretches through the added stiffness having been thrown to the ground gave her muscles. As she arches, her attention falls on the gleaming structure of the Grand Cathedral. Only a few blocks north of her, it casts its judgement upon the city through massive stone spires behind bronze statues. Her feet lead her there, and soon, she is following the footsteps of her vision of Bethany - up the stone steps and through the grand doors.

Inside the building is as opulent as it is severe. A red carpet leads to a shining statue of Andraste. Red candles burn golden flames. Sisters and brothers pray quietly in groups or individually, and the Grand Cleric stands on a dias in front of Andraste reciting the Canticle of Light.

“Grand Cleric Elthina,” Ian says as she rounds the steps to the dias.

“Miss Hawke, hello. To what do I owe the visit?” The older woman turns and clasps her hands behind her back.

“There have been gruesome attacks on those suspected of magic. There is hate thrown in the streets for the dead, and families are lost without reason or culprit to the murders.”

“Yes, these have been dark and tragic days for us all.”

“Why have you not spoken out about the deaths? The word of the Grand Cleric is needed in such a time as this. The people are restless. Will you not speak out and condemn these acts? Will you not tell the people that genocide is not the work of the Maker?”

The Grand Cleric bows her head, dismayed. “It is no secret that you count conjurers among your friends, Miss Hawke. My condolences on your sister, as well, but it is best that the proper authorities end this matter. No good would come from myself showing favor to either side.”

_ Bullshit _ , Ian thinks to herself, but keeps her temper in check. “The Maker created magic and those who are able to wield it. Why does he not protect them? Why do you not speak for them? This Ripper is dismembering them, Elthina. My own sister’s organs were taken, her blood splashed on the walls of a hovel!”

She bows her head and frowns, forlorn. “It is completely out of hand,” she sighs under her breath. “I feel for the conjurers, I do. I would not wish to fear for my life as they must right now, and I will do all that I can to end this, but I cannot go public. The city is at odds, and I cannot choose sides. As terrible a tragedy as it is, I must remain neutral. We are all the Maker’s creatures, but magic allows abuses beyond the scope of mortals. I must be a pillar of support for all, not one sect.”

“They are being butchered like animals! It is not choosing a side, your Grace, it is speaking out against violence. I fear your silence is only stirring up the oppositions, and much more harm could be done to a much larger group of people.”

“I pray that will not come to pass.”

“Then help do something about it!”

She closes her eyes a moment and breathes calmly. “Your soul is troubled, my child. Perhaps prayer can be your balm.” 

Ian feels close to her tipping point. Heat rises up her neck to her ears. “This is pointless, I thought perhaps you would aid in the unrest, but you do nothing. I shouldn’t be surprised.” Ian stares into the large spaces in the cathedral, frustrated and tired. She notices a large man praying in one of the enclaves. He wears a type of hood, but his horns are unmistakeable. “Your Grace,” she says, “is that a Qunari praying over there... in Chantry garb?”

“Not Qunari, he defected. He is Tal Vashoth now. But yes, you are mostly correct. He was once with the Qun. One of our sisters brought him to us not long ago.” Elthina smiles proudly. “He is flourishing here. It is great work the sisters are doing with him.”

“I might speak with him,” Ian says, her feet moving slowly in his direction.

“Normally I would wish you well, Miss Hawke, but that man will not answer you,” Elthina says and Ian halts, peering back at the Grand Cleric. “He was found with his tongue cut out and mouth sewn shut.”

“I see…” Ian says. He must have been a Qunari conjurer. Curious...

“Miss Hawke, before you leave,” Elthina says, a subtle suggestion that Ian find her way out and soon. “May I kindly suggest you find some rest. I see what this plight has brought upon you. If you will not pray, please rest. Perhaps things will be clearer once you’ve allowed yourself some time to heal in both body and spirit. This problem is in the Maker’s hands. The best we all can do is pray that He brings it the right and true Justice.”

Ian huffs through her nose and descends the stairs from the dias. She’s not sure what she thought she could accomplish, the Chantry has never publicly spoken out for the children of magic before. Why Ian thought that this time could be different is beyond her at this point.

She is at a loss...for all of it. She cannot speak to the Qunari. The path Bethany took her on to the Chantry was a dead end. Even her friends are unwilling to help her any longer. Without resorting to some blood ritual to speak to that spirit, Ian is not sure what she can do.

Ian rubs her forehead as she leaves to doors of the Chantry. Looking down the grand steps, she feels a bit of vertigo. Elthina was right about one thing, Ian is tired. She descends the hundreds of tiny steps slowly, each one feeling a little more wobbly than the last. She curses the Chantry for having such stairs in the first place. Must one sacrifice their life to the Maker in just visiting His building?

Her vision doubles as she approaches the bottom and she feels herself becoming faint. Perhaps a journey home is the best thing for her right now, and as she attempts to steer herself down the cobblestone streets to her estate, she trips. But instead of hitting the stone, Ian is caught from behind, and hands lift her upright while spinning her around. 

Anders.

His touch envelopes her in such a way that she could melt into it if not for her will against it. “What are you doing here?” she asks blearily.

“I was worried about you, so I...followed you.” 

“You should go.”

He scowls at her. “Why must you always fight me? You just fainted, Ian!” Squeezing his eyes closed he steadies himself before saying softer, “If you would let me, I would like to walk you home.”

There is a part of her - a large part that seems to be growing larger with every encounter, no matter how she wishes to ignore it - that wants nothing more than for him to walk her home. A part that craves for him to do much more. To revert the sands of time and be the volatile, but so intensely passionate pair they once were. She still fights this urge, however. It is too painful to give in and hope for more. “You shouldn’t be out in the streets,” she says and drops her gaze from his. “I told you to stay in Darktown. It’s safer for you there.”

Anders grip tightens and he shakes her no more than a tiny frustrated tremor. “All the while you are out here stubbornly questioning everyone as your health clearly fades? Ian, be reasonable. You need to rest. Let me take you home.”

She peers back up at him, thinking. She’s not sure she can trust herself with him once he crosses that threshold. But oh, how she wants to leap for it. 

Anders watches her hesitation and smiles a roguish little thing. “You just fell into my arms, allow me the comfort in knowing you’ve returned home safely.” 

Ian relents and chews the inside of her lip. She is damning herself, surely. With a meek little nod, they turn toward the direction of her estate. 

They walk silently, but he wraps his arm with hers in such a way that she feels both supported and confused. She wants to be supported, wants to be comforted, if only by this man. She glances at him, his mind in that thoughtful far-off place that she finds so attractive. A small crinkle has found its home between his eyes, and she sighs at its beauty.

“What I was trying to say before, Ian, is that I  _ do  _ care. I care a lot. Perhaps too much,” he says. “You turn everything upside down, because I finally feel alive.” He sighs a long, low sigh. She watches him, but he keeps his gaze cemented to the front of him. “Life is easy without you. Mundane, almost. Then you are this beautiful maelstrom that throws everything off balance, and it electrifies me. It’s intoxicating. Addicting. I hate you for it. But I do care.”

Ian says nothing, but is keenly aware of the pace at which her heart has soared. She fixes her eyes to the cobblestones before each step and tries to calm the urges his words awaken inside her. 

Upon reaching her home, Anders insists on following her inside to ensure she actually stays. They walk past her houseman Bodahn, and the dwarf looks like he could be pushed over by a gentle breeze.

“Master Anders,” Bodahn says, effectively lifting his jaw from the floor. “What an honor to see you, sir.”

“Hello, Bodahn.” Anders smiles and nods. “How are you and your boy faring these days?”

“As good as can be expected, sir. Miss Bethany was such a treasure. She is dearly missed. I’m afraid Sandal had a strong affinity, she was always extra kind to him, you see. The boy is having a hard time righting himself after this terrible wrong.”

Ian stops before the stairs that lead to her bedroom. There is a press of Anders hand to her back that is both stabilizing and heartbreaking. “Bodahn,” she says while staring down at the stairs. “I will not rest until I find her killer.”

“But rest she shall, or else we may lose her too,” Anders says and presses that hand on her back, urging her up the steps.

“We do not want you to bring harm to yourself, Mistress Hawke. Please allow me to provide any comforts I may while you are at home.”

“A bath is needed, I think, Bodahn. Thank you,” Anders replies and gently pushes Ian up the stairway.

“Right away, sir.”

Ian’s shoulders slump forward as she walks. She glances in the direction of her mother’s room as she passes. Leandra is surely locked away in there, mourning and blaming Ian for everything, but Ian is glad to not have to face her, at least right now.

“There is no need to watch over me as if I’m a child,” Ian says, betraying her feelings and the warmth she feels from Anders’ touch through her jacket.

“If you did not stampede through Kirkwall behaving as one, I wouldn’t feel compelled.”

Ian enters her room, slips off her coat, and tosses it over a chair. “I don’t know why you care,” she says. “You haven’t cared for any of my business for over a year.” She purposefully does not look at him, she’s knows she’s callous.

“You inserted me into your business by routinely producing yourself at my doorstep half dead.” She can hear him running his hands through his hair in frustration. “I may not...There may have been...no matter what happened before, I’m not a monster, Ian. I…I wish you,” he cuts himself off with a loud grunt of a sigh. “You know what? Fine. If you don’t want me here, I will leave.” 

As the words invade her ears, Ian panics. That’s not at all what she wants, and the idea that he is going to walk out that door, and possibly her life, forever, is more than she can bear. 

“No!” she screeches and spins around, snatching his elbow before he can cross the threshold. He stares down at her hand and slowly lifts his eyes to hers. She feels desperate. Needy. Everything has been so lost and convoluted and terrible, but it is with him that she prays she can feel some semblance of ground through this upheaval. Emotion builds behind her eyes, because she knows she has a choice to either fall from the weight of the world on her shoulders, or grab onto him for stability. She so desperately wants some stability somewhere in her life, even if it is just a facade.

“Please,” she says, a plea weighted in a shaky waver. “Don’t go.” 

They stand there frozen in time, her grip on his elbow, his body half out the door, and their eyes locked together. She can see the thoughts and questions and equations and worries and everything else racing through his mind. She can see the way his chest moves rapidly. She can hear his quickened breath. She swallows hard, waiting for him to make a decision.

And then, before her brain can comprehend the speed at which he moves, Anders slams the door shut and lifts her into his arms. He holds her, all of her, and she wraps herself around him completely. She could scream from the release this feeling gives her. And what seems like decades of built up stress, finally finds its way out through a few escaped tears.

“This is a very bad idea,” he says. 

Ian smoothes her palm over his cheek, her thumb dragging through his beard. “When has a bad idea ever stopped either of us?”

He smiles in his mouth but not in his eyes, those are weighted and worried. “Since the moment I left, I’ve been haunted by you all of every day. I’ve ached for you all of every night.”

Ian presses her forehead to his and speaks through her breath. “Anders, I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he says and closes the distance between their lips. She has to catch her heart from leaping through her throat. The feeling of him is so natural. It fills a giant void that has been wailing and echoing empty inside her for ages. 

Anders carries her to her bed and gently lies her down, never once breaking contact with their lips or his body pressed against hers. He lifts himself from her only to undress her. However, he does not merely unbutton her garments, but instead rips them. Threads easily snap under the force. Buttons ting and roll across the floor. He discards his own clothing with the same fevered actions.

When they are both naked, their skin connects at every possible point. Ian clings to him, and he to her as if afraid anything less would cause the other to vanish from their lives again. Desperation. Greed. Aching and emotional. At once, their bodies move together like no time has passed, and are devoured by a primal need to make up for all the time that has. Fingers and mouths alike scan flesh, finding the smooth curves and hard edges that had so long been craved.

_ I missed you _ , is whispered into Ian’s ear as she moans and claws at Anders’ back, pulling at him to make their bodies one. She never wants to be apart from him again. She needs him. She has needed him. If she thought the Maker would hear her prayer, she would pray for it incessantly.

It is exhilarating, the emptiness inside her filling again. She’s hated him and loved him and hated that she loved him for so long that under his body now, she melts into the satisfaction that that torment could be over. 

When they are both spent and heaving against each other, the reunion is not finished. Anders lifts her and carries her to her bath in an adjoining room. Delicately, he cleans and tends to the pain and the blood and the dirt built on her body, and she cleans and tends to the pain and the dirt and the neglect he has given his. They do not say much, their eyes and fingers say every word that could ever be said. Their lips convey every meaning that could ever be meant. 

And they return to her bed where they make love again, anew. And they cherish each other. And they lie with each other. And they hold each other through joined comfort and sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking around, we are halfway done!  
> Comments, thoughts, theories -- all loved and adored if you'd like to share!


	7. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ian wakes from her night of passion. More disturbing news is brought to her attention - featuring another note from the Ripper! She argues with some high-powered people in the city. And then she desperately tries to gain some semblance of control on this entire week from Hell, doing what she does best...what everyone begs her not to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay, but let me tell you, your comments fueled me through this one. Thank you!

 

# Chapter Six

Without opening her eyes, Ian draws in her first deep breath of morning consciousness. A slow, content smile then twists her lips. Her mind travels back to the night before. A wonderful feeling bursts through her body from her newly beating and rejuvenated heart. Anders provided the rest, love, and care her body and soul so desperately needed.

Eyes still closed and smile firmly in place, she reaches across the warm, soft sheets to Anders sleeping body. Her hand trails the linens like fluttering, silken chiffon, but when she finds only a cold empty side of the bed, she reaches with far more haste. Opening her eyes, she discovers herself alone. Sitting up fast enough to give her head a spin, she blinks through the dizziness to find that Anders is nowhere in sight.

The emptiness is a vacuum and air is sucked from her body. She notices a chill that she hadn't before. Her hearth’s fire had long since burned out, and there is a subtle morning frost on her window panes. Ian pulls her wool blanket over her naked shoulders, her skin prickling under the shivering cold. Wrapping herself completely, she steps on to the frigid floor and scurries toward the hearth to ignite a new fire.

It is not until the fire is crackling and glowing in brillant heat that she turns and notices a small paper on her table nearby. Dread and hesitation consumes her, staring at that note. It is heavy, magnetized, and the vision of it spurs and immediate headache. She sits in the chair beside the table, eyes fixed on that magnet of surely doom-filled paper. She should have never trusted herself to fall again, and so quickly this time.

_Stupid, stupid woman._

Ian picks up the note that she fears holds the words that will shatter her will. Still holding her blanket around her naked body with one hand, the other only peeking through the wool just enough to show her trembling, anxious fingers around the small folded paper. She stares at it for a long while, Anders' handwriting unmistakably scrawled across the cream colored fibers. _Ian_ , it says. Not _My Love_ , or _My Darling_ , just _Ian_. Her thumb draws across the long-dried ink, burning to know what it is inside. She burns even more, however, to stay seated in the contented bliss of which she had woken.

But that bliss is long gone anyway. It vanished as soon as her eyes opened. So, with a deep inhale for courage, she flicks the note open.

_I just need some time to think._

_A._

She stares at the words. Some time to think? He’s had over a year to think. What of all the words he spoke to her this night last? What of the tender touches, the caring stares, the loving kisses? How could he give in to her so fully then, only to run as soon as day broke?

That newly rejuvenated heart slips back into darkness. A normal person’s first inclination may have been to shed tears, but Ian is no normal person. Insead, she sniffs them back, shakes her head, and crumples the note before throwing it in the fire like the vile thing it is. Vile like the plague. Vile like the pox. Vile like anything that should be burned and never thought of again.

The blackness of her heart is fine. She knows it well. She is comfortable there. She was a fool to think it could grow to be anything else. She knows better. A momentary lapse in reasoning, like most of her decisions in this blasted and bloody week that has risen straight from Hell.

She has persevered through worse than rejection. She has lived most of her adult life swimming within rejection and death and darkness and solitude. She thrives there. When she and Anders work, it is beautiful, but it has always been fleeting, always been messy, always been a disaster. As beautiful of a disaster as Anders may be, she can do this - _all of this_ \- on her own.

With dark iron gates firmly reinstated around her blackened heart, she stands to dress. _No more_ with the thoughts of that man. She brings her focus back to the task that is far more important.

Bethany.

The fact remains that Ian is far more rested and healed than she has been in recent days - the medicine she was given able to do wonders while she slept. Her faculties should now be altogether better and ready for her in dealing with the tragedy sweeping Kirkwall.

Considering the path the last days have taken, Ian digs out her old harness from her drawers. A harness from the days that were spent fighting for survival in the hills of Ferelden all the way to the streets for Lowtown. The leather straps help to conceal two substantial daggers. She pulls one from its sheath to inspect the edge, dragging it over her fingers carefully. The metal is sharp and it shines in the light filtering in from her windows. It will do. It will do just fine.

Not long after dressing, as she finishes the last touches of her suit and buttons, Ian overhears a stir from the foyer below. The voices are followed by the sound of clomping on stairs in a hurried pace. Not long after, the door to her bedroom opens and Varric bursts through.

He doesn’t have to say anything, the look on his face explains it all.

“Another,” Ian says simply, and Varric nods.

The dwarf reaches to up smooth the hair back that had become disheveled in the process of racing to her home. “Hawke, this one you have to see.”

Ian swipes her hat from a hook on the wall and marches toward the door, and Varric follows her through her estate. “Have you slept?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Sandal is bringing the horse around, Mistress Hawke,” Bodahn calls to her from the foyer doorway, her coat in hand.

Ian offers her thanks as she takes it from the man and slips it on, and she and Varric leave the house. They do not have to wait long before they see Sandal round the corner with her carriage and horse.

“Enchanted,” Sandal says with a sullen nod, and they climb inside. Varric gives the boy their destination, and they take off through the streets of Kirkwall like Andraste riding into battle with her flaming sword.

“What changed your mind?” Ian asks while staring out the small carriage window beside her. “You all told me to stay away.”

“It seems no matter how much we want you out of it, Hawke, you’re in it.”

She turns her head to peer at the man riding beside her, but he keeps his gaze to his window and does not say another word.

Upon reaching the area of the crime, Sandal comes to an abrupt stop. Audible quarreling can be heard outside to which her horse nays and kicks. Ian opens the door to her carriage, finding a mob of people crowding the street actively making it impossible for them to travel further.

“Looks like we’re here,” Ian says and hops out of the carriage. She tells Sandal to wait a safe distance away from the mob.

She pushes her way through, Varric trailing a step behind her. They are soon consumed by the amalgamation of bodies and yelling. She hears racial slurs against elves, damnation on conjurers, and shrieks against the Chantry. People shove and spit, punches are thrown, but the mob itself quickly diffuses small outbursts of violence by the sheer inability to properly move within it.

It is no easy feat, but Ian and Varric eventually work their way through the crowd to a line of guardsmen. They guard a doorway while those who are allowed buzz in and out of it like a some kind of frenzied, frantic, and terrible beehive. Guardsman Donnic leads the blockade, however upon seeing Ian’s face, he nods and moves to the side, allowing her and Varric entry.

“The Guard Captain is inside!” he yells to her over the sounds of swirling chaos.

She steps through the doorway to find a modest room with a bed, a round table with two chairs, and a small wood burning stove. A very ordinary dwelling for one who resides in Lowtown. The extraordinary and ghastly part of it, and the reason for the mob outside, is the extreme amount of carnage also inside the room. She stares at the body...or rather...the pieces of body strewn across the bed and floor. She believes it to be the body of a man, but she cannot be sure to whom the parts once formed. She finds Merrill sitting in one of the chairs, sniffling and crying with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“She found him,” Aveline says, stepping beside Ian. “She’s been in shock and refusing to leave, but we need to get her out of here, Hawke. It’s not right to spend this kind of time staring at the remains of a close friend.”

Ian peers back at the body. “A close friend?” she asks, but her words are so quiet they are directed more at herself than to anyone else. She overhears Varric trying to persuade Merrill from the room while she stares at the remains.

Along with the usual dismemberment and cuts to be expected from the Ripper, the victim’s face has also been mutilated. His ears are missing, and even his nose. There is so much blood and viscera everywhere that it is hard to see what he once looked like, but with the age of the skin, the grey of his blood-soaked hair, and the reaction of her friend, Ian wonders if it is not the man she’d met with a few days prior.

“Orsino was his name, according to her,” Aveline says after following Ian’s sights to the bed. “She said you met with him after we found your sister.”

“I did,” Ian says. “Why am I here, Aveline? We could have discussed my meeting with the man elsewhere.”

“I wanted you to see this,” Aveleine says. She moves from Ian’s side to reveal the wall behind her. Upon the wall is old peeling wallpaper, a pattern of fading blue flowers on a cream background. And written clear as day over it all are words calling out to _her_ in blood.

 _Keep your nose clean, Marian Hawke. I’ve got ears everywhere._ _  
_ _DEATH TO CONJURERS._

“What?” Ian asks, staring at the words. She looks back at what is left of Orsino and his missing parts.

“Get Merrill out of here and somewhere safe,” Aveline says with stone cold purpose. Her piercing green eyes sear through Ian’s. “Then meet me in my office.”

“Of course,” Ian says more than a little shocked, more than a little perplexed. “Come, Merrill.” She scoops up her weeping friend with Varric’s aid and the two of them, along with Guardsman Donnic escort her back to Ian’s carriage.

Once inside, Ian sits across from Varric and Merrill, and the dwarf lightly rubs the elf’s shoulders. “Merrill,” Ian says with the softness of a breeze. “I am so sorry. If I put your friend in danger, I…”

“We are all in danger,” Merrill’s Dalish lilt hums through her tears. “This Ripper knows who we are, one way or another. If he knew about your sister, he would have easily known about Orsino as well. He must know about me. He must know about all of us.”

“He will never get to you, Merrill,” Ian says. She means it. She means it more than she has ever meant anything. “You will stay in my home and I will hire men to stand watch day and night until we catch this son of a bitch. Do you understand me?” She connects her gaze with Varric’s. “Stay with her...at least while I speak with Aveline.” Varric nods while continuing to rub Merrill’s shoulders.

Ian leans forward, taking the elf’s hands in her own. “He’s getting sloppy. We will find him. I promise you.”

The ride back to Ian’s estate is long and arduous. After getting Merrill safely within her home, and Bodahn set to call upon a few trusted men to stand guard at the house, Ian relieves Sandal and takes to riding horseback to Aveline’s office.

The air is cold and damp. It had rained the night before, and the clouds still cover the sky in a deep grey haze. Darker clouds spread far in the horizon, and the smell of a storm fills Ian’s lungs. She rides hard and fast, and the cold air chills her cheeks. Her coat flies through the air behind her. Dirt and mud and anything else is kicked and splattered in a trail of ferver. Townspeople run and dart from her path, for it is obvious she will not deviate. She is on a mission and it burns bright in her cold hard glare.

She takes her horse directly up the stairs to the Viscount Hall and quickly ties it to a lamp post. She shoots a _don’t-fuck-with-me_ stare at an official who tries to object. He closes his mouth before more than a sound could escape.

Her pace through the hall is as quick as it is heavy. Her purpose and vitality and every resource needed renewed, she slams her body through Aveline’s doorway with the force of a charging army and the heat of a thousand suns.

Aveline speaks first, through it is more of an accusatory scolding, heated in molten cast iron than anything else. A branding meant to sear into Ian’s flesh. A reminder of her orders, her place, and her own betrayal to the Guard Captain. “I told you to stay out of this, Hawke!”

“If you thought that I would, you do not know me.”

“Well, look at the mess we are in now. This maniac is fixated on you and your meddling. How the hell am I supposed to operate an investigation when your unsanctioned bullshit is tearing through this city, inciting even more destruction and mayhem around you?” Aveline's red hair could be burning flames and it would not look odd, it would be fitting to the level of anger the woman radiates through the room.

“You don’t,” a new voice states firmly from behind Ian.

Ian turns to find the source of the words, and Aveline redirects her glare to the man now standing in her doorway. “Excuse me,” she demands - it is not a question.

A tall, broad man of high confidence and assertive stature steps fully into the office. The man looks familiar, she’s seen him around her brother at times, but then a realization strikes a cold shock through her veins, making her blood freeze solid. She had seen this man in her lyrium vision. This man had stopped her from following Bethany. This man aided in her murder.

“The Templars are taking over the investigation. We have allowed your folly for too long. The Chantry and its special branch of Templars are far better equipped and knowledgeable when it comes to the activities and well being of enchanters.”

Ian peers at the flaming sword upon the man’s lapel. Visions of the real flaming sword slowly entering her heart and engulfing her in flames flash through her mind.

“The Templars are not an official branch under the Viscount. You cannot come in here and order me around, _sir_ ,” Aveline says with disdain dripping from her tongue.

“Wellbeing?” Ian says, glaring at the man. His amber eyes focus on her and she inhales involuntarily, thoughts of her vision screaming in her mind. She pushes through her budding fear, though, and steps closer to the man. “Templars care nothing for the wellbeing of conjurers. You make them disappear.”

The man sighs. “We rehabilitate them, we do not harm them. Get your facts straight before you shoot your mouth off at a member of the branch.”

Ian crosses her arms and cocks her head. “I will say what I want, when I want, and no pompous thug of a man will tell me otherwise.”

“Miss Hawke, if you have questions concerning the order and our true purpose, I suggest you take them up with your brother.” Looking back toward Aveline as if he was done with any further communication with Ian, as if he has a choice, he says, “And Guard Captain Vallen, if you have any questions regarding the validity of the order I am providing, I suggest you take them up with the Viscount himself. It was he, Madame Meredith Stannard, and the Grand Cleric who decided this, I am simply to inform you to step down.”

“Believe me, Mr. Rutherford, I will be speaking to the Viscount immediately,” Aveline says and storms from the room. Her shoulder slams into the man’s arm, but the hulking resolve he carries holds no room for bending, and he deflects the gesture without so much as a batted eye.

“Preposterous,” Ian sneers and is as equally ignored as she is determined to make her opinion known.

The man sighs again before looking at her. “Miss Hawke. If you are discovered pursuing this investigation, you will be brought into custody as well.”

Ian scoffs. “Under whose authority?”

“Under that Chantry’s.”

“The Chantry does not run this city. The Chantry has no power over me.”

“While I’ve been told that you are delusional enough to believe that _you_ infact run this city, Miss Hawke, you do not. The Guard Captain may be blind enough to allow your criminality to take place, but let me assure you, the Chantry and the Templar Order with have zero tolerance with the likes of you.”

“This all seems too convenient to me. How do I know it is not one of you involved in the first place?”

“ _That_ , Miss Hawke, is none of my concern. Good day.” The man, this Mr. Rutherford, full of piss and pompous arrogance, then turns and leaves the room without any further acknowledgement.

Ian waits impatiently for Aveline to return. Sitting in her desk chair, she drums her fingers on the wood and watches the pendulum swing on the old clock across the room.

_Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Ian huffs and fidgets and shifts around until she decides to open the drawers of Aveline’s desk. It is easy to spot the file containing the notes on the ripper case. So, she pulls it out to rifle through its contents. She finds photos of the scenes. Black and white and flat, they seem trivial, but she can still sense the devastation they depict. Snapshots of murder. Snapshots of loss. Snapshots of psychosis.

Snapshots… of her sister.

Her hand pauses on a photo whose edge is just peeking from behind another. Though void of color, she will never forget that blue velvet cloak. Hesitating at first, she slides the photo free from the pile. She stares at it, the same shock she felt in person attempts to overtake her. It pulls at her and sings longingly to trap her in despair. It is tempting, this song. A siren calling seamen to their deaths. Her eyes trace the image, wanting to give in, wanting to drown in an ocean of misery and loss, but she slides the photo away, pushing all of the photos with it, and covering it from her sight.

That is when she sees a small torn page with simple notes. Aveline’s writing scrawled across in ink. Names and groups, many of whom are crossed out, the Qun being one of them. But two words are circled, with the note beside them stating, “Need more answers, less run-around.” Those words and the circled ones beside them are particularly interesting to Ian, given recent events. Circled there among a list of what seems to be suspects and dead ends are the words, _Chantry_ , and _Templars._

At that moment, she hears Aveline’s voice roaring through the halls beyond her office, and she quickly brushes all of the strewn contents of the folder back inside and shoves it into the desk drawer. The drawer clicks shut just as Aveline arrives, groans an exasperated groan, and glares an exasperated glare.

“Get out of my chair.”

Ian stands without protest and moves away, back to her intended side of the room while Aveline slams into her seat.

“Is it true?” Ian asks. “Did the Viscount allow _them_ to take over?”

“It is.”

“Is there anything we can do about it?” Knowing now that Aveline’s investigation is interested in pursuing the Chantry and its special branch lends Ian’s stance to be a bit more empathetic toward the Guard Captain.

“According to the Viscount, no,” Aveline says, staring down at the wood grain of her desk like she could set it ablaze with just her eyes. “He took a meeting with Elthinia and that Stannard woman this morning, and they ‘ _mutually decided the most fitting course of action is for the city to trust in the Maker and His soldiers in this delicate matter_.’” She groans and runs her fingers through her hair as if to pull it free from her scalp. “My hands are tied. I am to do nothing aside from lend aid if called upon.”

“You may be tied, but I am not.”

Aveline glances up to her. “Careful, Hawke…This is not a group you want to anger, your mistake would be fatal.”

“I’m going to go meet with that Stannard. She’s the leader of the Templars in Kirkwall, is she not?”

“She is. And she is a cold-hearted bitch. Watch yourself with her, Hawke. I’d order you not to even attempt it, but I know you won’t listen.”

“You are correct,” Ian says, and with that she storms from the office.

Riding her horse through the posh streets of Hightown, it takes no time at all to reach the Chantry district. She ties her horse and stampedes toward an ominous building nearby. It is not quite as malefic as the towering cathedral next door, but unsettling and imposing in stature just the same. The building itself is called _The Gallows_ through whispers on the streets, due to the nature of many whom entered are never heard from again.

She slams herself through it’s oppressive and menacing iron doors in the way she does throughout Kirkwall, with unabashed disdain. The hall is gloomy and dark. Its walls are made of greystone that stretch high into the sky. Dark bronze statues loom in agony, wrapped in chains from years past when this was a slave trading establishment. It was meant to intimidate the slaves, and of course, the new owners of the hall saw fit to keep the buildings cheery aesthetic.

Ian's steps echo on the stone floor, announcing her arrival, and soon men come marching into the hall to meet her. Her brother chief among them.

“Sister? What are you doing here?” He stops her in her tracks, two goons standing behind him on either side.

“Where is Stannard?” she asks in more of a command than anything else.

“Why would you need to speak to her?” Carver responds with a crossing of his arms. His flaming sword broach glints in the low light, and Ian feels sick at the sight of it.

“I demand to speak with her.”

“I don’t see why you of all people would need to speak with the leader of the Templars.”

She cuts her eyes at her brother and steps closer. “Did you know? Did you have a hand in this?”

“What are you raving about, Ian?” Carver sighs heavy.

“Bethany. Your Stannard has taken over the Ripper case and threatens harm to anyone else who wants to help.”

Carver smirks. Ian has half a mind to wipe the smug little thing off him with her fist. “Sounds about right to me. The Templars are more suited with dealing with conjurers and enchanters. Stannard is the best for the job. I bet you’re just cross that you can’t go sticking your arrogance where it doesn’t belong.”

“Where is she?” Ian asks, looking over his shoulder, but he blocks her view. “I’m not here to deal with you or your stupidity, Carver. I have no time for this.”

“I think it’s best that you just turn around and head home, sister. We have this handled.”

“Carver, if you don’t get out of my way…” Ian rears back her fist. “I swear on Bethany that you will regret it. Templar goons with you or no.”

Carver stands taller, inching his body closer in determination. Just as he is about to speak, a more seasoned female voice calls from behind. “Let her pass, Mr. Hawke.” Carver immediately backs down and gives way to the source of the voice.

A blonde woman with stern features that are still undeniably beautiful steps past the men. Ian immediately recognizes her as the woman who pushed the flaming sword through her chest in her vision. Her heartbeat quickens, though she bites back the instinct fighting within her to attack the woman.

“Miss Hawke, I was wondering if you would stop by. Mr. Rutherford mentioned his encounter with you,” the woman says. She is as cold as the icy-blue of her eyes.

“Why have you taken over the Ripper case and shut everyone else out in the process? Should this not be an all-hands-on-deck scenario? The body count is rising,” Ian says.

“I assure you, the case in in good hands. There will be no more bodies. We have this under control.”

“How can you assure that? And why would you not want my involvement? You realize this madman has been targeting me in messages, do you not?”

“That won’t happen any longer. We have the matter firmly in hand.”

Ian’s blood boils. “How?”

“Templar and Chantry business is none of your concern. All I can do is offer my condolences and apologize for not taking over sooner.” The woman is impassive, and Ian realizes that Stannard will only talk her in circles.

“Your words are empty, Stannard. I do not trust a single syllable.”

Stannard motions to Carver and nods to the imposing iron doors. “Perhaps your brother can escort you home? Your family has much to mourn, you both should be with your mother in a time like this. Rest assured that the killings will cease.”

Ian sneers at them both. “Forget it. Carver belongs here.” She steps closer to the woman and the men behind rustle their feathers, angling to action. “Something isn’t right here,” she says, voice low. “I intend to find out what, and there is nothing your thugs can do to stop me. Do you hear me Stannard?”

She smiles and holds Ian’s glare. “Loud and clear, Hawke. Have a pleasant evening.”

Ian turns to leave, her echoing steps banging through the cold hall. Stannard calls out for one last word. “Be careful out there, miss. The streets of Kirkwall have proven to be dangerous indeed.”

If steam could pour from Ian, it would be filling the large hall with a balmy humidity that would drip down the stone walls.

Leaving the building, she marches down the steps to where her horse is tied. Her back to the alley beside her, and mind racing with anger, she thinks about finding that emporium from before. She will do what it takes to find the answers she needs. She has the power and will to summon that spirit, and Anders be damned, she will do it. Demon or not.

She is so caught up in her thoughts and fury that she stumbles with the knot in her horse’s lead, and she does not pay mind the the figure looming through the alley toward her. It is almost too late when that figure lunges, but it is the winnie from her horse that gives Ian the fraction of a second to react. Spinning on her heels, she manages to catch a wrist in one hand, and push the body with her other.

A figure, in black from their head to their toes grunts over her, pressing her down. Ian feels her knees begin to buckle, unable to get into a stance fast enough to counter the attack effectively. Ian groans in waning strength, her eyes fixed on a long knife shining down at her from the hand of that caught wrist.

The two struggle for power, the knife closing in far to quickly even though the time moves slow. She will not die like this. Not now. Not by his hand. With a loud roar, Ian musters all of the strength that she can to shove the figure way a couple of steps. The person stumbles backward just enough for Ian to be able to grab one of her hidden daggers and point it at her assailant.

“You’re him, are you not?” she says through heaving breaths. They both crouch and stare at each other, though she cannot see his eyes through a dark cloth he wears over his face. “You’re the Ripper.”

He has no reply but to lunge forward with his knife. Ian spins to dodge away, but the blade connects with her forearm, slicing through her coat and shirt and skin like she was made of nothing more than butter. Ian screams from the shot of pain ricocheting through her and jabs her dagger in return. The Ripper is slower to react than she, and Ian’s knife slides deep into his abdomen. Ian then feels a sharp sting in her calf as his knife slices through muscle.

There is a crack of thunder, a strike of lightning that is far too close. That storm she sensed before has rolled in, and Ian’s horse screams and kicks, almost hitting both her and her attacker. As Ian dodges from the flying hooves, the Ripper hollers from the pain in his gut and escapes down the alley. Ian ventures to chase, only to stumble and fall on her face due to the cut in her calf. She screams out of both pain and frustration as rain drops begin to fall in large balloons of wet, and the long black cape of the Ripper flies through the air as he runs, illuminated by more flashes of lightning.

The Ripper long gone, and managing to get back on her feet, Ian is eventually able to drape her body over her horse just enough to ride. Rain falls heavy, the sky is dark, and the streets just as black. Ian relies on the fright in her horse to guide them home, cursing the Ripper, the Chantry, the Templars, and herself the entire way.

Once at her estate she limps her bleeding body through the house, heading directly toward Bethany’s room.

She had not stepped inside the room since long before Bethany’s death, but now she swings open the door and stands there while clutching her arm, pain and rage pulsing through her in tandem, creating a cocktail of wicked determination. She scans the room, he eyes landing on Bethany’s writing desk. She pulls it open, sloppily pushing her sister’s things around in search of a specific secret. A secret that got her killed.

Tearing through the room, she searches and bleeds and destroys and yells, “Where is it? Where did you hide it, Bethany?” Finally, under her sister’s bed. She finds a small locked box. No key in sight, and no patience to seek it out, Ian smashes the box on the floor until it falls apart. And there it is. One small vile of blue conjuring agent. Lyrium.

Ian snatches the vile and heads for her bath. Passing her mother on the way, Leandra looks alarmed at the state of her eldest daughter. “Marian! What has happened to you?” she calls out to Ian’s deaf ears. Ian opens the hall door to the bathroom that joins her bedroom and locks it behind her, making sure to lock the door to her room as well.

Her movements in a fervent frenzie, she pulls her case of hand-rolled cigarettes from her breast pocket and spills its contents on a table in the room. Unrolling a cigarette, tobacco spilling across the table top and onto the floor, she uncorks the vile with her teeth and dumps the blue powder on the rolling paper, mixing it with the remaining tobacco. Blood dripping down her palm and staining the paper, she rolls the cigarette and licks it closed between her shaky fingers.

The voices of Leandra, Merrill, and Varric call to her beyond the doors. They knock and yell to her, their hands jiggling the handles. Ian ignores it all. She rips off her jacket and digs for a match box from her trouser pockets. Easing into the clawfoot tub in the room, her blood and rain soaked clothing smears red down white porcelain walls.

She sticks the new lyrium-laced cigarette between her teeth and strikes match after match until she is finally able to get one to light long enough to bring the fire to her lips. “Alright, demon,” she says through clenched teeth. “You want blood? Take it.”

After inhaling frantic puff after frantic puff of the blue drug, she begins to feel the world slip from around her. The knocking and hollering beyond her bathroom doors are a distant sound, bearly louder than crunching a blade of dead glass.

Soon, she is surrounded by darkness and complete silence.

“Where are you, Bethany? I’m bleeding here for you!” she yells into the void.

A figure appears before her, but it is not Bethany’s. It is a figure of a woman, though she is shrouded in a red netting of sorts. Branches, or perhaps antlers, sprout from her head, draped in the red. It’s almost like lace, and it cascades down her face, gathering below her chin, the clings tight to her thin, lithe body only to pool at her feet in a mess of gauzy red...something. It’s not fabric, it’s too otherworldly for that, and something about it feels... _alive_.

“You aren’t Bethany.”

The woman, or being, or demon floats toward Ian until she can see black eyes shine at her from behind the red draping stuff. In this close distance, the red seems to pulse, like a netting of tiny woven veins. Intricate and ghastly, they have a glossy sheen to them, and there is a metallic spark of a smell in the air around her. A blood webbing of some kind? Surely not...

The creature reaches toward Ian. Impossibly long bony fingers extended longer by even more impossibly long nails, or perhaps claws, clutch around Ian’s bloody forearm. She swipes a claw into the cut and Ian hisses through the pain. She tries to rip her arm away, but the creature is too strong. She would break it before she could ever release herself from the red grasp.

The being examines the blood collected on its claw then stares its black eyes into Ian’s soul. Without warning, Ian is thrown from the blackness.  A force sucks her through space and throws her on the floor of a dark, damp room. She barely has the time to get her faculties together before she sees the black cloaked figure of the Ripper step literally through her. She spins around to follow where the Ripper is gong in this dark dungeon of a room, only to find, to her horror, Anders strapped to a table. He is struggling and attempting to scream through a gag tied around his head and through his mouth.

He thrashes and his yells and the black figures selects a knife from the table. Anders screams a guttural sound. His skin begins to glow in the way it does during rage, and blue lightning cracks through the room.

“No!” Ian shrieks and lunges forward just as the Ripper brings the knife down and into Anders’ body.

The vision disappears and the bathroom door to breaks open with a resounding crash in the same moment. Bleary and shaken Ian is able to see Anders rushing toward her through the door that is now in tatters, her mother and friends flooding in behind him. Anders falls to his knees beside the tub, a look of horror on his face when he discovers her wounds and the blood pooling within the porcelain walls.

“Ian,” he says wiping dirt and sweat and hair from her face. “What happened? Ian? Ian, talk to me, my love.”

“Anders,” she says, though it is weak. She brings her fingers to his cheek, the nightmare of her vision searing through her mind. She knows now without a doubt that Stannard is wrong. This is not over.

And she cannot lose him, too.

“You’re in danger,” she says in naught but a whisper. “I cannot lose you, too.”

And then her world goes black again, but this time it is void of blood-red-sheathed demons with horrifying prophecies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to shout out to everyone for the amazing love you've been sending me in the comments, on Tumblr, and in private messages. It means so much to me. This has become my favorite project, and while it's not my most popular, I think the quality of this readership is top notch. You guys are amazing. Thank you for all of the support and ideas and creativity!
> 
> I want you all to please head over to Idrelle_Miocovani's corner of AO3 and check out what she did for me with Ian and Anders, it is amazing! Check it out, you will not be disappointed. Give her kudos and comments and love! And check out her other writing as well, because it's stellar. Like some of the best out there, for real. 
> 
> What she wrote for me is here, go read it! -- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13189281


	8. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Ian’s run-in with the Ripper and her vision brought to her by the mysterious spirit. She is injured. She is frantic. She is bound to push on.

#  Chapter Seven

Wood cracks and pops in the fireplace. A dancing orange glow warms the room and clings to Anders’ back. He stands by a window and stares out into the dim streets of Hightown. The overcast sky remnant of the passed storm, it blocks the evening sun aside from a filtering grey light that progressively grows darker. 

Watching Anders, Ian lies in her bed wearing nothing but a night shift, some carefully wrapped bandages, and the still air of the room. Not yet does Anders realize she has woken. She prefers to soak in what peaceful time she has left before everything erupts, as it is sure to do.

Anders sighs a heavy sigh, the kind of sigh that shortens one’s stature, the body physically giving way to the weight of thought. He trails his fingertips along fringe that dangles from drapery edges, slender hands twisting and sliding through fibers. It is an absent minded action, however, his mind must be filled with the many challenges a life knowing Ian entails. He sighs again. Turning toward an armchair, he relieves the pressing thought-filled weight on his bones and sits by the fire. 

Ian lies motionless. A dull ache throbs through her body from its torment hours before. She ignores the ache, however, and instead fixes her thoughts on Anders, wishing that their lives could be simpler. A beautiful thought, although, she has never been one destined for an easy life…

She travels through a fantasy world where Kirkwall isn’t a mess, she is able to feel happiness, and no one is destroyed - physically or otherwise. 

She envisions herself draped across a settee in the study, her feet resting on Anders’ lap. One of his hands is caressing her, the other holds open a book that he reads in a soft, romantic tone. Or perhaps instead, he sits at his writing desk while working on his manifesto, which she lazily reads beside him. She allows herself to delight in the excitement in his voice as he speaks passionately of his ambitions. She allows herself to thrive under their shared affections. She allows herself contentment.

No matter the activities, they live comfortably. Together. In peace. No worries of Chantry harassment. No fear for their lives or freedom. Anders’ experiments with the magical healing arts are unhindered. Bruises are no longer the consequences of Ian’s affairs. Their only quandaries consist of whether or not to attend the next stately dinner - the answer to which would most certainly be to  _ not _ . However, their dearest friends often visit for parlor games and conversation over brandy. And maybe someday, there is a child. Someone raised in a loving home, reaping the benefits of Ian’s grit and Anders’ critical thinking.

A beautiful thought, but not one that will happen. Not one that could ever happen. For Ian was never destined an easy life. A happy life. No, she sacrifices. Destined to fight. For everyone. For everyone  _ else _ .

Hunched over, leaning with his elbows on his knees and rubbing a hand through his short, disheveled beard, Anders sighs again. He turns his head toward the bed, then looks away only to echo back in his discovery.

“You’re awake,” he says, easing to his feet. The pressure of his mind and company is so great that his bones snap and pop much like the wood in the fireplace. He walks over to her bedside and places the back of his hand on her forehead, then down to either cheek. “Why did you not say?”

“Savoring the tranquility,” Ian whispers. A momentary release shimmers throughout her own weighted bones at the presence of his touch.

He sighs again. “I’d ask you what happened, but I’m sure you will either lie, or simply not tell me. But understand this, Ian, we could have lost you.”

Ian stretches back against the bed and pillows surrounding her, an action that makes her wince at pain shooting through throbbing wounds. “I did not inflict these on myself, if that is what you are thinking.”

He perches himself on the side of the bed. “The arm maybe, but I would be at a loss as to why you would slash through the back of your leg.” He reaches and takes her hand. His is cold. His skin, dry and papery. He squeezes her palm while looking at her with sullen eyes, and waits. 

Begrudgingly she says, “I saw your death.” There is a foul turn in her stomach, flashes of the vision invading her mind. “The Ripper. I saw him kill you.”

Anders turns rigid and rips his hand away. “So that  _ is _ what you were doing with the lyrium and the bathtub and the blood.” His fists clench. The tips of his ears turn bright red. “You tried to summon that demon again.” He glares at her incredulously, and his voice steadily rises. “And with your  _ blood _ ? You don't know what your doing. It’s reckless. Dangerous. You were sacrificing yourself to a trickster, and for what? To learn more lies? More hapless riddles?” He is almost screaming now, his voice cracks like the fire. He stands to pace the room, his shoes echoing with each step. A log slips in the hearth causing an array of bright ash to plume wildly before floating back down to the floor.

With great pain to her wounds, Ian sits upright. “The Ripper attacked me in Hightown! What would you have had me do?”

“You should have come to me,” he grumbles.

“You were gone!” 

He stops his pacing. Turning from her, he scoffs. “As if you don’t know how to find me.”

“And what would you have done? Patched me up and told me not to poke around the void? What if I was followed to your clinic, Anders. Then what?” Ian feels her voice shake, and images of Anders’ death continue to plague her mind. “We both end up dead? No, Anders. I knew I could get to the spirit. I needed answers.” She crosses her arms, her eyes boring holes into the back of Anders’ head. “Unlike  _ you _ , I am willing to do whatever it takes to end this nightmare.” 

Anders turns to her and cocks his head to the side. “Are you now? And tell me, did you receive these answers? Did the demon tell you  _ who  _ the Ripper is?”

Ian looks away, heat rising into her cheeks. “No.”

“ _ Shocking _ .”

“What it did was warn me that you are in danger.”

He scoffs again and paces to the window. Staring into the smoky, twilight sky he murmurs, “I’m always in danger, Ian. No revelations there.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Perhaps if I had stayed longer, or given more blood, I--”

“Infuriating woman!” Anders yells. He slams a fist into the wall, and the window panes tremor under the impact. “Your head is rammed so far up your arse… You cannot change what happened to Bethany, and you cannot save Kirkwall by  _ giving your blood to a demon _ .”

Ian snaps a searing glare to the man. “And you can save it by giving  _ your life _ to one?”

Instantly after her words hit the air, there is a flash of electricity. The window reflects a quick glow from Anders’ eyes. The atmosphere thickens and static surrounds them so suddenly that it sends the hairs on the back of Ian’s neck to attention. 

“Watch your tongue, woman!” Anders bellows. His voice changed to one much deeper than before. There is a hollowness to it. A dark echo that dances menacingly along the room’s walls. 

“If you think I am afraid of you,” Ian shouts back, “then you are gravely mistaken!” She lifts her body from beneath the sheets and off the bed. Sharp pains flash and pulse through her injured leg. She stumbles from the shock. Unable to take another step, she braces herself on the wall and slowly returns her furious attention to Anders. “Why have you not given me your new exlir?”

He turns to her, his face shrouded in shadow, but blue still flickers in his eyes. “It heals too quickly.”

“Come again? Is that not its purpose?” Her tongue is sharp as it strikes the thick atmosphere surrounding them.

Anders takes a step toward her, shocks still sparking around him. “Not for you. If you are well enough, you will only continue. I cannot watch you do it. I _will_ _not_ watch you kill yourself. If keeping you bedridden is what must be done, then I will do it.”

“How dare you think you can control me. You do not know me at all.”

“No, Ian. As I've told you before, I know you too well.” Anders marches to the door, swiping his draped coat off a chair as he passes.

Panic triggers inside Ian. For as frustrating as the man may be, she needs him to stay in her estate. She needs him to stay there where he is protected. He may not believe in her vision, but that is not a gamble she is willing to make. “Wait!” she calls out. “You cannot leave! What of the danger?”

As he swings open the door to her room, Anders turns his head, but does not look at her. “I do not fear your demon’s false prophecies. But if death is what awaits me, I welcome it.”

The slamming of her bedroom door may as well have slammed directly into her gut. She is weak. Stunned. Her mind relays through the events of the evening while cursing her temper. Cursing  _ his _ temper. Heavily using the wall for assistance, she limps to the window and watches helplessly as Anders flees across cobblestone and into the ever darkening streets.

His dark coat veils him, his collar popped high to shield his face. His stubbornness worn as false armor, he leaves her door as one did only nights before... though now it feels like centuries have passed.

She let Bethany walk into that night alone, and now she is letting Anders do the same. She has lost control. She is failing her sister, failing Kirkwall, failing the one person with which she has ever dreamt of another life. 

Ian swings her body to chase after him, but her foot catches, dragging as she falls to the floor with a crash. Fresh blood stains the bandages wrapped around her leg, and the electric shriek of agony that accompanies it forces her to cry out. Moments later, her door opens again and a voice shouts her name. 

Merrill rushes into the room and crouches by Ian’s side. “What are you doing out of bed? You’ve ripped your stitches!”

It is labored, but Merrill helps Ian to her one good leg and supports her enough to get her to the nearest armchair. Ian slumps down. She is too defeated to be angry. Anders won. He patched her enough to protect her, but not heal her, and now she is stuck. Stuck in her folly. Stuck in her obsitancy. Stuck in the deep mud surrounding her. Too viscous to escape, too murky to see through, too suffocating to survive.

Ian gestures to a tray beside them, a bottle of whisky waiting upon it. With hesitation, Merrill pours them both a glass. “You know much of magic and spirits, Merrill. Do you believe what the spirit showed me?” she asks while staring into amber liquid.

“It’s hard to say,” Merrill responds. “Spirits, benevolent or not, are fickle. After we pulled you from your tub, I tried to call on this spirit that has chosen you, but I found nothing.”

“You do not believe me either?” Ian takes a large gulp of whisky.

“I believe there is incredible danger for all who practice magic. I believe that your will to end this danger has somehow attracted an entity. What I cannot say is whether this creature has chosen you to help...or to hurt you.” Merrill sips from her glass, eyes fixed on the crackling fire. “I have a great respect for the beings of the Fade, Ian. A bit hypocritically, if I'm honest, Anders is against what I practice. But with the right precautions, it is just as valid as his uses of magic.”

“Can you show me?” Ian asks. “Can you show me how to better summon it? I need to contact it.”

“Ian…” Merrill sighs and shakes her head. “No. You haven't the training. Blood magic is a delicate and dangerous art. Without the proper discipline you can end up…” Merrill’s eyes flit over Ian’s bandages. “Seriously injured… or... dead.”

“That’s why I'm asking for your help! If this entity will only appear to me, I need you to teach me how to communicate with it.”

“No, Ian. I won't do it. You've done enough. I will not help you endanger yourself any further.” She looks down at her drink. “No matter how much you may try to subdue me, you will not convince me to help you. Not with this.”

Ian’s fingers clench with white-hot force. “Then leave me. If you will not help me, leave.”

“Anders is strong,” Merrill says softly, ignoring Ian’s command. “That power within him will be his protection. And he is so well isolated in Darktown.”

“That isolation could be his very downfall. No one to witness. No one to hear him if he struggles. I have to go, Merrill. If I cannot stay and call upon the spirit for help, then my only option is to find a way to get to him and protect him myself.” Bracing either arm on the chair, she hoists herself up. The alcohol dulled the pain a little, but as she steps through her room she feels herself give way and lands unceremoniously on the edge of her bed.

Merrill runs to her. “Ian, you can’t! You could never make it all the way to Darktown in this state.” She retrieves bandages from a table. “Let me fix your stitches before you do any permanent damage.”

Unwrapping the saturated bandages, Ian sees a mangled gash ripped through her calf. Iridescent threads have sliced through where they had been weaved into her skin, allowing the view of the bloodied flesh beneath. 

Merrill hums a soft chant that Ian cannot make out, and the threads begin to glow. She works to tighten where threads had loosened, and readjust to account for the tearing. Her wound is slowly and delicately stitched back together through Merrill’s meticulous attention and magical aid. She then wraps fresh bandages around it and cups Ian’s calf with both hands. A cool sensation brushes through her, numbing the throbbing that has accompanied her injuries.

“I'm not nearly as talented as Anders, but I know a few tricks from my days with my clan. Enough to fix his stitching and bring you a modicum of comfort.” She looks up at Ian and offers a soft smile.

“Thank you,” Ian says. She shifts to lean against the headboard and elevates her legs on the bed. Merrill brings her a second drink before retaking her seat beside the fire with her own.

They first drink in silence, occupied by their thoughts alone. But  _ one more drink _ soon leads to a second, and then a third. Conversations ebb and flow to the beat of their sipping lips. And like a snug blanket, their intoxication wraps around them, providing a false sense of security until Merrill curls up in her chair and drifts to sleep.

Pleased that her caretaker finally retired, and careful not to make a sound, Ian slides out of bed. Keeping her weight off her injuries, she pulls on knee-high boots and wraps two leather belts across her injured leg to stabilize it as much as possible. Once fully dressed and as supported as she can make herself, she eases through her bedroom door.

“Where the bloody hell are you going?” Carver asks from a chair stationed outside her bedroom door.

“What is it to you?” she responds like a whip cracking across his face. “Why are you sitting out here? Do not tell me you worry for me.”

“Of course not.”

She gestures toward his chair. “Then why the guard post?”

“Not everything is about you, sister. I worry for another.”

Ian glances into her room and the sleeping elf inside. “Merrill?”

“You have her here for her protection, do you not?”

“Yes, but since when do you give a fig about a conjurer? You do realize why she needs protection, don't you?”

His cheeks redden and his attention darts around the walls. “Bethany was my sister too, Ian. My twin, no less. I do not wish harm on conjurers, much less dismemberment.”

“I have men stationed outside the estate and patrolling the alleys nearby, you know.”

Carver scoffs. “I don't know them. I can trust anyone you employ about as far as I can throw them.”

“So it may be, however, I've not known you to think of anyone beyond your own loathsome self, for any reason.”

The redness spreads and the color deepens. “Get off it, sister.”

Ian looks back again at Merrill peacefully curled in her armchair, the soft orange glow of the fire dancing on her skin. She peers again at her brother, his arms crossed and brooding, his cheeks flushed with not anger, but embarrassment. “You care for the woman,” she whispers, almost in shock.

“Go to hell.”

“You do. My word, brother, I did not think you had it in you.”

“Seriously, Ian. Fuck off,” he grumbles. “Go ruin yourself and everyone else, as I am sure you were about to do. I won't pretend to think I could keep you from it, nor do I care to.”

“If she wakes, do not let her follow.”

“Wouldn't dream of it.”

“At least you are good for something,” she says and turns to descend the stairs.

At this late hour, the entire estate  _ should _ be asleep, her idiot brother aside. So when she hears, “Enchanted?” whispered behind her while donning her coat, she almost jumps. Stunned, she turns to find Sandal standing behind her and Bodahn behind him, worry writ on both of their faces.

“Mistress Hawke, you should not be out of bed in your condition,” Bodahn pleads. “Please come back to your room.”

“I need to go after Anders. He is in more danger than I.”

Bodahn wrings his hands and scans the room nervously. “He mentioned...well, you see, I saw Master Anders as he left. I told him I made up a guest room so as he could stay and tend to you more easily. And with the late hour approaching…” 

Ian sighs and feigns a quick smile. “Your point, Bodahn?”

“Yes, well, you see, he told me he planned on taking a room at the Hanged Man tonight. He wished to speak with Master Tethras. He informed me that he would return in the morning.” There is a hopeful lift to the man’s brow. “He also mentioned to not allow your leave of the premises.”

Ian cocks her head. “Are you going to stop me, Bodahn?”

“I do not presume to order you… but please,” Bodahn gestures to Sandal, “allow the boy to escort you. There is safety in numbers...and in carriages.”

Ian huffs and taps her foot. Looking between the two men, she throws her hands in the air. “Fine. Sandal, bring the carriage ‘round.”

Sandal moves with haste, and soon Ian is traveling through misty streets. There is still a ruckus brimming about the Hanged Man when they arrive. She walks in a slow, steady pace through the tavern doors - the spell Merrill cast and the brace of her boot only aiding a small amount - and upon first scan of the room, there is no sign of Anders. 

Feeling the numbness whisky provides wearing off, she orders a stiff drink at the bar before asking after him. She drinks it quickly, knocking it back in one swift motion.

“I assume you are looking for  _ him _ ,” a voice grumbles from a few paces down the bar. 

Ian glares in the direction of the sound only to find an all too familiar hunched figure brooding over a bottle of wine. From the hat on his head, to the gloves on his hands, and the boots on his feet, he is draped in black - except for silvery-white hair that shrouds his face. 

“Fenris,” she says with a sneer.

“He was here,” he says, “but he is gone.” He takes a drink, still not lifting his head to truly acknowledge her.

“Where did he go?”

“I do not know, nor do I care. He left. As is his habit, to run away,” he answers in almost a growl. 

“Yes. A trait you both share, as I recall,” Ian responds dryly. 

He lifts his sweeping hair from his face, revealing a rather fresh and rather painful looking bloody bruise on his cheekbone.

“You spoke with him, I see. What did he say?”

Fenris huffs a grunt. He glances through the side of his eye, his pearlescent green iris flashing her direction before he lets his hair fall back in front of it. “You have returned to him.” He turns his head so that she may see the mix of apathy and regret in his eyes. “Congratulations.”

“I do not have time for your jealousy, Fenris, I...”

“Jealousy?” he interrupts. “I am not jealous of that abomination. As far as I am concerned you two can have each other. It matters not to me whom you choose to bed.”

She points at the bruise on his face. “Then how did that come to pass?”

“He simply saw me, threw his fist into the side of my face, and left. Should not surprise you that a man like him be dishonorable.”

“Scoundrels in glass houses shouldn't throw stones,” she retorts. 

“Hawke? What on Andraste’s flaming sword are you doing here?” Varric asks. Ian hadn't noticed his approach. “How can you even stand? I saw the slice to your leg. It went clear to the bone!”

“I am looking for Anders.”

“He didn’t stay with you? He said he would...”

“The cowardly conjurer went back on his word, and you are shocked by this?” Fenris quips another jab at the man not present to defend himself.

“Enough.” She glowers at Fenris. “He is in danger. He must have gone home. I have to get to Darktown.”

“Hawke, you’re limping, and by the smell of you, you're drunk,” Varric says. “You need to sleep this off before you go galavanting around the city anymore. I can send someone to check on him.”

Ian scoffs at him before turning to leave. But as she does, she is stunned to find Sandal had been standing behind her. “Sandal? What are you doing?” she asks, wondering how long he had been there.

The boy lifts a small box, wooden and plain. An offering. “Enchanted?”

“What’s that?” Varric asks as Ian takes the box and cautiously lifts its lid. A bloodstained note sits atop a bloody, linen-wrapped parcel. Ian’s skin suddenly feels colder than a stormy Kirkwall night.

“Where did you find this, Sandal?” she asks.

“Enchanted,” he responds and points back toward the front door of the tavern.

“Did someone give this to you?”

“Enchanted,” he affirms.

Ian hands Varric the box and opens the note while he unwraps the parcel. “Did these… belong to Orsino?” Varric asks holding out the box with terror-filled disgust. Inside they view two mangled ears and a nose. 

A mix of emotions swell in Ian’s gut like a illness. Remorse, rage, revulsion. She swallows hard before reading the bloody note aloud.

_ Dear Bas, _

_ I hear the guard can no longer look for me and that the order has me in hand. Rest assured, they have not fixed me yet. I have laughed that they have the city fooled. Conjurers are filth and I shant quit ripping them till I am chained. _

_ I do hope you enjoyed my last work. I have sent you a memento. Memento mori, if you will. You still snoop through my world, and you have shown your true nature. Know this, Bas Saarebas, I’ve ears everywhere and you should keep that nose clean. _

_ I do apologize that our meeting was cut short. Perhaps another time. _

_ The Ripper _

“Bas? Saarebas?” Ian asks, the words tumbling awkwardly from her lips. 

“Qunari,” Fenris says. “They refer to those who are not one of the Qun and to those who illegally practice magic.”

Ian looks back at Varric. “Could it have been a Qunari all along?”

“Or is it a scam,” Varric says. “The Qunari district has been attacked mercilessly because of this. Maybe he is using them.” He points at the letter. “There is a little more on the back,” he says, and Ian flips the paper over to find her nightmare come true.

_ P.S. _

_ Thank you for leading me to the physician. He shall make an excellent trophy. I shall send him back to you in pieces. _

“Anders!” Ian shrieks. Looking at Sandal she orders, “We have to go. Now.”

“Not without me,” Varric says.

The three hurry through the tavern, Ian’s limp causing a hindrance, but she pushes through the agony searing through her leg. She won't let it slow her down, she has wasted enough time already.

Sandal takes them to the Darktown entrance nearest Anders’ clinic. There are dark, wet, and steep steps that lead to the old sewer town. Ian slips and stumbles most of the way down, covering herself in muck. She can feel tearing again in her wound, but she pushes on as close to running as she can until they reach the clinic.

“Anders?” Ian yells as she yanks open the doors. The room inside is destroyed. Books, beakers, everything strewn about in a frenzy. The three search the winding misbegotten halls calling out to him, but there is no answer. 

Finally, Ian swings open the door to Anders’ private bedroom. His old writing desk in disarray. His notes, crumpled and ripped. His bottles of potions and elixirs, smashed and on the floor. His bed, empty. And what she can only presume to be his blood, streaked across the wall and dripped across the floor.

Anders is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bas: Literally, "thing;" foreign to the Qun; purposeless. Often used as a neutral term to describe non-Qunari people.  
> Saarebas: "Dangerous thing;" the Qunari word and title for their mages. A "bas saarebas" denotes a non-Qunari mage.  
> Memento Mori: An object serving as a warning or reminder of death. Latin for "remember that you have to die."
> 
> The “Dear Bas” letter is heavily influenced by the real “Dear Boss” letter sent to the police during the real ripper case!
> 
> Personal Notes:
> 
> I had my baby! He’s 2 months old now and I am gradually finding some time to write. I will finish this story before I work on any of my other WIPs. There are only 2-3 chapters left. Originally, I planned for 3 more, but I think I may combine the next 2 into one climactic and epic chapter. Then we just have to finish her off ;)
> 
> Thank you for coming back to this, I know it has been months. My absence has weighed on me greatly. Thanks for reading!


	9. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders is missing. Ian is in shambles. She must find a way to save him even though she is so terribly wounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to combine this chapter and the next, but ultimately that didn't work for this chapter and writing it became impossible. So I'm back to the original outline of 10 chapters with a prologue! We are really amping it up here, hope you enjoy! Only 2 more chapters to go.

 

#  Chapter Eight 

When Ian was eight, she climbed a tree. It was the tallest tree outside her small Ferelden town of Lothering. A boy, she does not remember his name, dared her that she could not reach the top. But Ian knew better. She was strong, and she was brave, and she proved he was wrong. It was not until her descent that she realized her mistake.

She fell, her body knocking branch to branch. Cuts. Bruises. Fractures. And then she stopped, dangling and helpless. The children below screamed and scattered - the boy chief among them. Surely he would be to blame, and he would not be caught standing there below Ian as she gently swung, speared by that tallest tree outside Lothering.

Bethany was six. Bethany did not run or scream. Instead, the young girl looked up to her stronger, braver, older sister who had tears slipping from her eyes. Bethany spoke as a cool summer breeze and she told her older sister not to panic, because Bethany would get help.

Ian waited - nothing else she could do. She tried not to think of how one leg was still as her body swayed upside down. She tried not to feel the rivers of warm liquid creating streams down her skin. She tried to focus on the cool summer breeze her sister had left behind.

When Malcolm arrived, he was even. He did not smile. He did not frown. He was even.  _ Too _ even. Methodically even. The type of even her father would be in public when he hid his anger and disappointment from onlookers.  _ Scary _ even. But Bethany stood beside him, smiling, her brown curls blowing with the breeze. Ian focused on her instead, and felt calmer for it.

Though he was exposed, standing there at the base of the tallest tree outside Lothering, Malcolm took a sip from a flask he kept in his breast pocket. He took out a pocket knife, and while incanting strange phrases under his breath, he cut a slice into his palm. Methodically even words and a fine red mist surrounded the family in a magical vortex. The sharp, broken branch that had speared a young Ian’s young calf, and thus halting her descent, was dislodged. Her body eased down to the ground, carried by the drifting red mist until she was lying at her too-even-father’s two feet. And Bethany smiled and told her older, stronger, braver sister that everything would be alright.

When Ian was twenty-one, she fought a beast. He was no longer man, but mangled and evil and twisted. Like a plague, he was the destruction of her homeland. He stood between death and freedom, and his aim was to slaughter. But Ian was strong, and she was brave, and she killed the beast first. It was not until she fell to the ground alongside its still body that she realized she did not survive the fight unscathed.

She felt tired and cold, and as her eyes drifted closed, it was the blurry, serene face of Bethany she saw before it was nothing. It was the comforting words of her sister and her cool summer breeze that Ian heard before it was nothing. And it was her sister’s smile, and a reassuring hand holding hers that awaited when Ian woke back to something.

At twenty-three, Ian searched for legitimacy. She plotted and she schemed, and she sunk deeper and deeper into corruption. But Ian was strong, and she was brave, and she did what she had to. She killed, framed, and extorted who she had to. And her heart hardened how it had to. 

She thought it a price she was glad to pay. 

With bloody knuckles and perhaps a broken soul, she retrieved her family’s legacy. But she had grown distant and cruel in her quest, and a familiar, cool summer breeze rested its hand upon her shoulder, urging her return. It was not heeded, instead, shrugged away. Far, far away. So far that the breeze chilled, the breeze stilled, and the breeze died away.

Ian thought it a price she was glad to pay, but it was not until now that she realized the cost. The cost was a darkness where there was once sun. The cost was neglect where there was once love.

“I will not let him die.” The words echo in the air like a chant as Ian searches for crutches in Anders’ empty clinic. She had sent Varric and Sandal to enlist the aid of anyone they could find, as well as exhaust Varric’s contacts to search for signs of Anders. She sent them under the guise that she would stay put until someone came for her, her injury only slowing them down when time was most crucial. Not surprisingly, and she was sure Varric sensed the truth, Ian does not stay put.

Upon finding the set of crutches in a cupboard, she takes to the avenues of Darktown. And she screams. Over and over again, she hollers for Grace. She calls out, mowing over any poor sap in her way, and she screams the name until her throat feels tattered and torn.

Ian tests the walls of every dead end she can find, but nothing allows her passage. Her breath labored, her body ruined, she rests her forehead against a boarded up wall and murmurs, “Grace, where are you?”

“I am here.”

Ian spins to find the very woman she searched for grinning at her while leaning on her strange cane in that way that makes Ian uneasy. Though she cannot trust the woman, Grace is more than likely the only person in Kirkwall who will help with what Ian needs.

“What can I do for you, Miss Hawke?” she asks.

“I need you to show me how to do a blood ritual. I intend to speak with that spirit,  _ actually _ speak with it.”

Grace quirks her brow and corner of her mouth alike. “That requires a lot.” Her voice is like a purr, sly and slinky. “Specialized lyrium for someone with your limited experience. And the Antiquarian found you unworthy, I’m afraid.”

“I never spoke of the Black Emporium. I never spoke of you or your Mr. Xenon. I can be trusted. I beg of you, let me into your den.” Ian cannot deny the spike of adrenaline at the thought of ingesting Lyrium again. A distant song sings from the back of her subconscious. Her body heats, her heart beats faster, and a few beads of sweat form above her brow.

Grace feigns a sigh. “Alright. Enter,” she says, “but I will not be responsible if Mr. Xenon sends the bear after you.” Her strange cane begins to glow, and she grins as she points it at the wall behind Ian. 

Ian turns, and upon placing her hand where the wood should be solid, she slides through to find herself in the emporium once again. Grace steps in front and leads her across the bridge that suspends over nothingness, back to the den of lyrium and lush sofas. But they do not stop there. She leads Ian through room after room of oddities and strangers. She leads Ian even though the voice of her associate echoes through the corridors, speaking of how Ian best mind herself now and after. He will not tolerate the outburst of shenanigans she had brought forth during her previous visit. Ian has no recollection of how she got from the Black Emporium to Anders’ clinic that night, but she is sure it was even more destructive than she imagined.

Eventually, Grace leads her to a large, dark room with a strange chair in the center. Not quite a chair, in all honesty, but almost a table. Similar in kind to a seat one might find in a barbershop - a metal frame, reclining, and cushioned in areas wrapped in dark leather. Its armrests and leg rests, however, extend outward to hold one’s appendages in the shape of an X. Straps dangle from the padded metal ledges, and metal U-shaped troughs provide pathways into a vast reservoir in front of the not-chair, not-table. The reservoir is a large, shallow, copper bowl of sorts, presumably meant to collect large amounts of blood. 

The entire thing is ghastly, and for a moment, Ian reconsiders.

Grace hands Ian a shift and gestures ahead with the end of her cane. “Put this on and have a seat.”

Ian takes the shift, though her eyes do not leave the scene before her. “What...what is that?”

“It provides a safe space for you to sacrifice your blood to the beyond. With the right additives, it is very powerful.” She smiles wryly and gestures again. “It is safe. Have a seat.”

It is with great hesitation and strong will that Ian fully enters the room. As she disrobes and slips the shift over her head, she tells herself that she is strong and she is brave, and she will do what it takes to right the terrible wrong she allowed to be. 

Grace aiding her balance, she limps to the center of the room. Once seated, arms and legs splayed, Grace straps Ian to the the not-chair, not-table. She is remarkably terrible at reassuring Ian that the contraption will not lead to her demise, but regardless, Ian perseveres.

Grace leaves Ian’s side to retrieve items from a cupboard in a dark corner of the room, returning with an ornate glass, a cube, a strange perforated spoon, and a small vial of some kind of iridescent blue potion.

“What is that?” Ian asks, watching as Grace places the items on a small metal table beside her.

Pointing to the ornate glass where within, a liquid that is an otherworldly shade of green swirls, Grace says, “This is absinthe.” She balances the perforated spoon on the rim of the glass and then the cube upon that. “This is sugar.” She winks at Ian. “Takes away the bitterness.” She drops precisely three drops of the iridescent blue potion onto the sugar cube. “And this, Miss Hawke, is a highly concentrated lyrium potion.” 

Grace waves her fingers and a small blue fire bursts onto the sugar, dissolving some of it into a bubbling brown syrup that drips through the perforated spoon’s tiny holes. Dropping the spoon into the absinthe, she swirls the leftover sugar granules around, creating a tiny hurricane of shimmering green. Heady aromas of sweet florals and anise fill the room, and Grace presents the glass to Ian’s lips with a simple command. 

“Drink.” 

And drink Ian does. The shock of the concoction is so strong that it induces an uncontrollable cough. Magic drips and drizzles from the corner of her mouth and down her chin. The flavor is intense, it heats and tingles her senses the entire trip from lips to tongue to gut. And thus, with startling potency, magic with a flare of alcohol enters her system, provoking her body to feel its effects in nearly no time at all. It takes hold of Ian’s mind. The room distorts to a wobbly world of funhouse mirrors. Her body numbs and sinks straight down into the seat, the world growing larger, brighter, and more distorted around her. If not for the straps holding her in place, Ian would fear that she may sink entirely into the floorboards, never to be seen again.

Grace’s twisted shape then produces a wicked looking knife Ian had not seen before. It is long, skinny, and appears to have some kind of glowing runes etched down the blade. Grace uses it to cut Ian’s skin, a hot blade of ice slicing through snow that parts and melts and gushes forth red. The blade opens both of Ian’s wrists and both of her thighs. She feels nothing and can do nothing but watch the spectacle of white flesh parting for a sea of crimson rivers that flood down the metal tracts and pool into the copper reservoir.

Grace mumbles dark words from a dark language Ian has not heard since she was a young girl dangling from a tall tree. And then, through the shallow pool of her blood, a shape begins to emerge. Slowly, it grows and rises. Antler-like horns. Webbing. A lithe body with long arms, long fingers, and long claws. Covered and dripping with blood. Covered in Ian’s lifeforce. It rises until it is the full shape of the demon she had seen the night before. But this time, it is not appearing inside her mind. This time it is physically standing before her. It is hideous. It stares into her with two black eyes. Two black voids of hell. 

Ian cannot help but struggle under its gaze. She is trapped, caught in a web of her own doing. Her body weak and getting weaker by the second, it is easy for the leather straps to hold her down, but she pulls and thrashes and tries to rip from her shackles regardless, and to no avail.

Grace drops to her knees, head bowed. “I have brought her to you, my lady. The woman Hawke.”

The demon nods slowly, its predatorial eyes still fixated on Ian. It points one long finger tipped with one long claw toward the door, and Grace hurries away without question.

“Wait!” Ian calls out. “Don't leave me here!” But Grace ignores her plea and vanishes from the killing room.

“You needn’t fear me, child,” says a voice from inside Ian's mind. The sound drips from the walls. The sound rings from her bones. The demon’s head tilts slightly in a quick, cracking, and jagged fashion. The entire thing seems to flash and distort and flash again, as if none of it is real. Yet, to Ian’s frantic, pounding heart and bleeding body, all of it is most definitely, very real. 

“I am here to free you from the shackles of your guilt,” the voice purrs through the air and through Ian’s skin. “In this strange, corrupt world of yours, the forsaken call to me. Cruelty runs rampant through your streets. Savagery. Sadism. It is the guilt and the guilty for which I hunger. The broken to which I show mercy.” The demon moves from the center of the reservoir, slinking closer, blood dripping from it, but somehow never running dry. “Yours is a most powerful beacon.” The creature leans in. It is large and looming over Ian’s frail body. “You called to me from a hovel. You brought me here when you placed that swipe across your face.” 

Memories of cutting her hand over the place where her sister’s body had laid dead come to Ian’s mind. She remembers the electric feel the air had when she painted blood across her nose and promised Bethany she would not rest until she brought justice to her murderer.

Placing a claw under Ian’s chin, the demon tips her face up, and Ian’s eyes connect again with the two black voids staring back at her. The omnipresent voice whispers luridly into Ian’s ears, “I can free you of it.”

Ian swallows. The guilt she harbors for allowing her sister to leave that night, the guilt she harbors for growing distant, the guilt she harbors for every wrong deed she did or allowed to happen that lead her to this point weighs in her gut like and anvil. To be free of it seems impossible, but more importantly, she will do what it takes to right her most terrible wrong. 

The power held in the two black eyes and the lyrium pulsing through her blood and bones has Ian slipping further and further into delirium. She opens her mouth to speak, but it is only a shuddered wisp of the word  _ how  _ that slides out.

The eyes seem to smile at her and the unease grows in Ian’s gut nearly to the point of bursting. “I can heal you, child of the fade,” it continues. It drops its claw from Ian’s chin and hovers its hand over her chest. A warm feeling grows there. It is calming. Needed. Her fear melts away and her strength returns. A taste of vitality that Ian has been severely lacking. 

“I can give you the information you seek, where you may find all of your answers,” it continues. “And I can free you from your pain forever.” It retracts its blood-covered hand from her, taking the warm feeling away with it. “For a price.”

“Anything,” Ian says without hesitation. She means it.

“After you right your wrong, you must pledge your lifeforce to me. Your blood will be mine and live on in infamy within the Fade.” It moves in a sharp motion to lean closer again. “Have we a deal?” 

Ian feels tendrils sliding and wrapping up her legs and arms. “Yes.”

That seals it. Immediately, tiny red tendrils shoot up Ian’s body. They wrap and twirl around her. They pulse and slide and pulse and tighten. The warm feeling of vitality returns as she is consumed by the demon’s intricate red webbing. The ubiquitous voice whispers continually into her mind as the webbing beats life back her body.

An image of the grand cathedral flashes in Ian’s mind. “All can be found there,” it says. “You have wounded her.”

“ _ Her? _ ”

“Yes. Her pet, the child of horns is in the catacombs with the abomination. It still lives. Much stronger than expected, it fights. Justice proves difficult to condemn with mortal power. The child of ancient fires and swords hides with her kin. She will be easy enough. Her sickness is prideful. She is not so simply controlled as the great swords had hoped.”

“Great swords?” she asks, and visions flash in her mind with rapid speed. Stills like photos from Varric’s camera fly in succession so fast that she barely has time to comprehend them. But she is able to grasp an image of Andraste in stone standing with her sword, the Grand Cleric kneeling at her feet. Then, a metal pin. A metal flaming sword below steely blue eyes. The eyes bring back the memory of Ian’s nightmare of the woman and the man and the sword pushed into her chest. The vision brings back the cold, sharp feeling she had when she met the woman Stannard. All other flashes of images are lost to her, but those were enough. 

“Are you saying…” Ian wishes she could be shocked by the revelation. “They knew? They have known all along?”

Words boom in her mind like a crack of roaring thunder,  _ I will await your final blood sacrifice _ , and everything crashes down around her, sending her straight to black.

Ian gasps for air, her eyes bursting open. She jumps, finding herself in her bed. Was it all a dream? No. It couldn’t be. It had all felt too real. With fervor, Ian scans her body for evidence of her wounds, but she finds nothing. She takes a deep breath, her lungs full and strong again. Her body pulses. It is solid and…  _ alive _ . 

Without a moment’s more thought, Ian flies from her bed to her wardrobe. She finds everything, her knives, old brass knuckles, anything else she could use in a brawl. She dresses to fight. She dresses the kill. She dresses to win.

“I will get her for you, Bethany. I will get them all,” she says under her breath and throws open the door to her room. 

Ian rides. As dawn’s light sleepily illuminates Kirkwall’s hazy sky, she rides and she rides and she pushes her horse to the max until she reaches the doors of the Viscount. And soon after, Ian bursts through Aveline’s office like she had always done before. And she finds her friend exhausted and hunched over her desk, an old oil lamp burning low beside her. 

“Hawke? How are you…” Aveline’s voice trails off. She glances at a ticking clock on her desk, glances at the soft light filtering through mercury glass windows. “Why have you come at this hour?”

“We must take on the Chantry, and we need all the men you can spare,” Ian says, pounding her fists onto Aveline’s desk.

Aveline rolls her eyes. “I don’t have time for this, Hawke. During the night, a mob uprising happened outside the Qunari district.  It was a bloodbath. The Arishok is refusing aid, and I am up to my eyeballs in…” Aveline groans. “It doesn’t matter, just get to the point. What are you raving about, Hawke?”

“A coup.”

“A coup?”

“We are taking over that Maker-forsaken place.”

Aveline shakes her head and rests her forehead in her palm. “Hawke. You really are mad this time. There is no way the city guard is going to attack the Chantry.”

Ian paces, and the floorboards creak. She stomps, and the windows rattle. And she shouts to the point that her ears ring. She swings her arms wildly toward the office windows and the corrupt city beyond. “They have her. They have known. And they have Anders! If we do not go now, she will kill him too!”

“Hawke! Calm yourself! You sound like a lunatic.”

But she is a lunatic. Time is running out, and if she does not convince Aveline to help her, it could all have been for nothing. The demon may have strengthened her, but even she is not bold enough to take on the Chantry alone. She must convince Aveline to listen. 

“The Ripper, Aveline!” she shouts. “It was never a he, but a she... or a they?” Ian scrunches her face and shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter now. But they knew! The Cleric. The Templars. They knew and they are covering it up.” 

Ian rounds Aveline’s desk, falling to her knees beside her old friend. Taking Aveline’s hand in hers, she begs. She is not above the sentiment. Not now. “And they have him, Aveline,” she says, tears wetting and reddening her eyes but not falling. Aveline stares back at her, concerned, tired, but listening. 

“They have Anders now,” she continues. “He yet lives, but I do not know how long he can fight them off. Please. Trust me. You know I would not beg it of you if I were not sure.”

Aveline stares down. A furrowed line creasing her freckled brow. She chews on her lower lip and looks toward the desk drawer where Ian had found the files on the Ripper case. Where Ian had seen Aveline’s doubts about the Chantry and the Order written, but forced to be forgotten. Ian’s revitalized heart thumps and pumps wildly in her chest, but she only squeezes Aveline’s hand and waits for her to see the truth. The truth Aveline knew was there. The truth Aveline would fight for. Because like her, Aveline is strong and she is brave, and she will risk everything for what is right. 

Aveline looks back at Ian in earnest and returns the squeeze, their hands bonded in strength, determination, and justice. 

“Then I shall gather my men.”


	10. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ian and Aveline march on the Chantry!

#  Chapter Nine

“I swear to Andraste herself, Hawke, if you are wrong… I will end you.” It is not so much something Aveline says, but something she growls. 

There is a small lift to the corner of Ian’s mouth. “I would not expect anything less,” she says as they climb the final steps to the Chantry doors. She turns to look behind them, glancing at a group of guardsmen thirty strong marching at their back. At the base of the steps, a small gathering has formed, early risers having filled the streets and followed the spectacle. Bewilderment on their faces, they all gape and gawk at their city soldiers marching upon their city clergy.

Ian pulls what remains of a hand-rolled cigarette from her lips and tosses it to the side. She blows out the cool smoke as she turns back and rips open the cathedral doors in one powerful, fluid motion. Her voice echoes against the high ceiling of the grand hall, “We know of your misdeeds, followers! And we’ve come to collect.”

Guardsmen flood the hallways and corridors, rounding up all clergy found in morning prayer or otherwise, and gather them in the center on the hall near the base of Andraste’s towering figure. Ian and Aveline, however, head directly to the time-worn, spiraling stone steps leading down to the cathedral's vast catacombs.

“Still be alive,” Ian pleads quietly to herself, or to any being that may listen. Her heart grows sick as they descend, the dampness of the catacombs and the evil that lurks there making it so. “Maker bloody damn you, still be alive.”

The catacombs are old. Ancient. They spread wide in a dizzying array of dead ends and wrong turns. It is a maze of poor planning, death, and dirty stone. The women run through the lanes of the dead calling out to Anders, though they receive no reply. That is, until a few right turns lead to a few right paths, and soon to an audible shout echoes in the distance. 

Ian’s breath chokes in her throat. He still lives. He must. “This way!” she yells, and she races toward the sound. That glorious sound. That sound is evidence that perhaps she is not too late.

It isn't long before she can see flashes of blue faint light.  _ His  _ light. His Maker-damned blue lightning striking and shining like a beacon, however weak it may be. 

She runs harder and harder. Shoulders slam into narrow walls. Soles slip on loose stone.

She and Aveline then reach a small tomb of a room, and in its center is a table with a glowing, enraged, and exhausted Anders strapped and shackle down to it. As Ian runs in, a great horned-beast descends upon Anders, knife in hand.

Anders hollers with perhaps his final inch of energy, and a burst of electricity charges through the air. A shockwave knocks the behemoth across the room and into a crude bookshelf. The wood snaps upon impact and as the Qunari’s body falls to the floor, books follow and  _ thwap  _ hard onto his head, dazing him. Before he can rise back to his feet, Aveline is standing before him, the blade of her dirk unsheathed and pointed at his neck. Following that action, a simple command. “Do not move.” 

Ian runs to Anders’ side, calling out his name. She quickly rips through his bindings with her dagger. 

“I warned them,”  Anders says. His voice is dark, containing little of the man she loves. “I cannot be tamed so easily.” He glares at the Qunari on the floor, his eyes searing with blue light, his veins shimmering with electricity. He moves to stand, but the frailness of his mortal body gives way, and he falls back against the table.

“Anders,” Ian says, blocking his view of the Qunari, “Look at me. Come back to me.”

He glares at her a moment. The blue raging in his eyes until it slowly begins to fade away, revealing their golden-hazel hue. A softness befalls his face, and the last remnants of vengeful electricity fades. “Ian?” he says in bewilderment. “You're here?” He reaches for her and attempts to move again, but she stills him.

“Be still. You're weak. How badly are you injured?”

He pauses and glances over his bloodied clothing. “I feel drained. A bit banged up.” He smiles at her. “But breathing, which is better than I thought I would be a few seconds ago.”

“What is this place?” Aveline asks.

Ian scans the room. A room meant for the dead to rest, but changed into something else entirely. The dead disturbed, they give way to treacherous planning and doom. Papers, books, and shelving lie amidst old sarcophaguses. Medical journals with grotesque drawings are circled and written over. Anti-magic rhetoric is scrawled across the pages haphazardly. The markings and scribbles of a madman… or mad _ woman _ as the case may be. 

She finds an old board loosely covering a tunnel through the catacomb walls. A thick scent of sewer smell wafts in.

“That’s how they dragged me here.” Anders says. “It connects this room to Darktown.”

Ian marches over to the Qunari. “What is this place? Where is she? Why were you attacking Anders?” she hollers in his face. She brings the point of her dagger to press against his neck. He only snarls at her, and growls a gurgling, guttural sound. His lips curling, she notices the scars from where bindings had once sewn his mouth shut. 

“Perhaps we should just kill you now?” She glowers back, pressing the blade hard enough to draw a bead of blood from him that then slides down to the hilt. The creature only growls back, leaning forward to press her blade further into his skin, more of his blood flowing down the knife and dripping to the floor.

Aveline rears over him while placing a hand on Ian’s shoulder. “Hawke, we cannot kill this creature in cold blood.”

“Cold blood?!” Ian roars. “Just now the beast was attempting to kill Anders without a thought!”

“No,” Anders says calmly. “He is a slave. A pawn. He is a conjurer. One that the Chantry scum here took from the Qunari. She assumed power over him in the process. He is bound to obey.” 

“I believe it is time we meet the sister who calls herself  _ The Ripper _ ,” Aveline says. She draws Ian back from the Qunari, though her dirk is still at the ready. “Listen to me,” she says to the Qunari, “I will cut you down if I have to. Do you understand?” She points her blade to the doorway. “Walk.”

The man rises, silver eyes boring into Ian until he leads them from the room. They work there way through the catacombs and back into the cathedral. Ian support Anders the entire way, his body fatigued and damaged as he limps beside her.

Upon their arrival in the grand hall, they find the guardsmen have gathered everyone, including the Grand Cleric herself, into the center.

“Guard Captain Vallen, what is the meaning of this intrusion!” Elthina hollers.

“You know exactly what this is about, Cleric,” Ian shouts. “One in your den has been butchering the people of this city, with the help of this Qunari!” Ian kicks her boots into the back of the beast’s knees and he stumbles to the floor.

“That is preposterous, Miss Hawke, I--”

“Do not try to deny it,” she interrupts. “We just saved this man from a deadly fate within your catacombs! I know for a fact that one of your sisters is to blame, and you harbor her here among these women.”

“Stand down guardsmen!” A voice bellows from behind. Ian turns to see the Templars storming the cathedral, lead by Meredith Stannard and Ian’s own brother, Carver.

Aveline speaks with all of the calm strength of still air before a storm. “Stand your ground, men, this woman has no authority over you.” 

“Finding a man being attacked by a rabid beast in the Catacombs is no proof,” Meredith declares.

Carver steps close to Ian, his head and his voice hang in equal parts quiet and stern. “This is mad, Ian, even for you. Stop this now, or else I cannot help you… and Mother has lost enough already.”

Ian ignores them both, returning her attention to the Grand Cleric. “Elthina, these victims are people, not just  _ conjurers _ . You may view them as abominations, but at their core, they are people. Just people with lives and families. So many lives that are now destroyed because one in your flock is deranged enough to think that genocide is the answer. How can you stand idly by and allow her to murder your God’s children?”

Elthina opens her mouth to speak, but a shrill voice shrieks over her. “A conjurer is no child to the Maker!” 

“Quiet, child!” Elthina chastises. 

But the voice persists, and soon, a young woman moves through the gathering of clergy to the front. “They are the spawn of demons,” she says. Her ice-blue eyes are heated and fiery with madness. She moves forward past Elthina until the woman grabs her arm and hold her back from approaching Ian further. Elthina grips her and pulls her back. 

“Sister Petrice, hold your tongue.”

But Sister Petrice does not hold her tongue. She pulls away from the Grand Cleric and approaches Ian again. She stares at Ian with unladen hatred, a hatred that produces venom in her heart and on her tongue. “Their ancestors pledged their souls and their offspring to demons! All so that demons should feed and prey on us for eternity! Our streets are filled with vermin! Blasphemous and wretched are they that play with the fires against the Maker’s name!” She stares at the Qunari on the floor. “They are just as vile as the other beasts our city allows in our walls. Both should be purged. Cleansed from us. Cleansed from this world!”

“Shut up, Petrice!” Elthina shouts and attempts to yank the girl back into the fold of the gathering. But in doing so, Ian notices the girl favoring her left side while she limps and struggles under Elthina’s grasp.

Ian lunges forward, grabbing the young sister, and slams her thumb into the spot where she had stabbed the Ripper. Petrice lets out a cry and cripples to the floor. Her short blonde hair falls in her face as she crumples in on herself in pain. 

Ian looms over the whimpering woman. “Sister Petrice, is it? I do not believe we have been formally introduced.” 

Ian rises, and while holding Petrices wrist firmly in her hand, proclaims to the witnesses, “But not yesterday did this woman attack me! Dressed in black, and as a man, she lunged at me as I stood by my horse.” Ian glares toward Meredith. “How do I know it was her, you may ask? Well it was perhaps luck that my horse let-on to her attack, and I was able to stick my knife in her side before she escaped me.” 

Ian reaches down to slam her fingers into Petrice’s side again. The girl wails, her voice echoing in the still of the air and ricocheting against still of the stone. Petrice then points to the Qunari. “Ketojan!” she yells. “Kill her! Kill them all!”

The Qunari grunts and rises back to his feet. He thrashes against descending guardsmen. He hollers and throws them to the ground one after the other and charges toward Ian. But before he can reach her, a blast of energy bursts through the room. Directed toward the Qunari, it sends his body careening into a far wall, and he is knocked unconscious. Guardsmen and Templars alike circle him, shackling him in irons.

“I’m not sure what more proof you need than that,” Anders says, rubbing his neck and sinking to his knees in exhaustion.

Ian smiles down at Petrice, a crazed feeling coursing through her body. 

The Ripper. Here. Trembling and defeated before her. Her sister’s killer. Orsino’s butcher. The psychopathic killer raging through the streets of the poor, and ripping apart lives in the process, is now at her feet. 

Crouching beside her, Ian pulls her knife still stained with Qunari blood, and presses it to Petrice’s throat. “How about I finish the job my dagger started? What do you say we end this here and now,  _ sister?” _

“You kill that woman, Marian Hawke, and the hand of the law and the Maker will swiftly fall down upon your own head,” Meredith’s voice sneers.

Ian laughs - she and her sanity have long since parted ways. “You can threaten my death all you want, Templar. My fate was sealed the night this wretch murdered my sister.” There is a ping of despair in Ian’s chest, emotion threatens to well in her eyes. The turmoil of the week weighs heavily on her, and its release so close at hand... Her only goal is to finish it all and then the demon can claim its prize. 

Ian shakes her head and stares into Petrice’s wild eyes. “I am a dead man walking. There is nothing any of you can hold over me now.”

Aveline approaches Ian cautiously. “What of the other families, Hawke? The other victims. They deserve to see this woman brought to the full extent of the law. They deserve their peace as much as you.”

Ian growls lowly, the burden of her grief and her guilt pressing her down to hell. She stares through the side of her eye to the ground below Aveline’s feet. “Justice must be served,” she whispers.

Aveline reaches out ever so slowly and places her hand over the one with which Ian holds her dagger. “But not with you as executioner, my friend.”

“She’s right,” Anders says. “Allow the city to heal through the witnessing of her punishment. I understand the vengeance in your heart, but be still. Just for now. For the sake of the victims. For the sake of Kirkwall.”

The dagger in Ian’s hand begins to shake. If it were only she and this woman alone, there would be no question. But Anders’ words weaken her resolve. She pictures the other loved ones, the others of this city who have feared and lost and crumbled under the hell that struck their alleys. She sees Merrill’s large green eyes welled with tears at the fate of her dear friends. 

The justice upon this woman is not for her alone.

It is with great reluctance but a sure foot that Ian stands and backs away from Petrice. Guardsmen swiftly step in, pulling the sister from her feet and dragging her away.

As Aveline walks her men and her captors down the red carpet of the long hall, Meredith blocks their path. “You were told to stand down in this venture, Vallen. If this woman is to be arrested, it should be within the Templars’ irons, not yours.”

Aveline steps closer to Meredith, leveling their eyes with one another. “Take it up with the Viscount,” she says, and marches her men through the doors.

  
  
  


At the Hawke estate, Anders by her side, Ian takes off her coat. She hands it to Bodahn, too mundane an action to even feel real when considering everything that has happened. She listens, but it sounds lost in a fog, as Anders announces that the Ripper has been caught. Bodahn shouts with excitement and congratulations. 

All Ian can do is stare up the stairs. A sad song playing in her heart. A worry in her gate. She stares forward and climbs the steps to her mother’s bedroom. The room Leandra has locked herself in since the news of her youngest daughter’s tragedy. Without a word, Ian follows the halls to the doorway that has remained shut for days. Boarded and sealed. Sealed by a mother’s grief.

Ian opens the door. It creaks a long whine until she has full view of the bedroom. The curtains are drawn tight. It is dark except for a low fire at the hearth, its soft glow illuminating her mother’s sullen face. Leandra slowly rocks in a chair, staring into the amber flames, and Ian steps into the room.

“Do you remember the rocking chair we had in our home in Lothering?” her mother asks.

“I do.”

“Your father made me that chair while I was carrying you. He was not much of a carpenter. It always had a squeak. From the very first day it squeaked as if it was decades old.” She pauses, her eyes drifting over the arms on the chair she rocks in now. “This one is silent,” she says with a hint of disdain. “I would have liked to have brought that chair with us.”

Ian crinkles her brow. Of all the absurdities... “We were fleeing for our lives, mother,” she says.

“I know that, Marian,” Leandra snaps, and the silence that follows is deafening, until Leandra finally sighs and shakes her head. “You always were full of spirit, you know,” she says. “Even as a babe. I would rock you in the late hours of the night. Urge you to rest - to lay your head on my shoulder and sleep. You never would. Not my Marian. You would arch your back, crane your neck, and stare into the fire.” Fixated on it, the fire dances in her mother’s eyes. “You were mesmerized by it.” Leandra drops her gaze and directs it to Ian. “You were always drawn to dangerous things.”

Stillness befalls the room once again. A log pops. Floorboards creak in the hall - caused by Anders, most likely. A few moments of silence pass, along with a tear down Leandra’s cheek. 

“You never should have let her leave that night, Marian,” she says softly. “I knew something would happen. I could feel it in my heart. A mother knows these things. But you would not listen. You have  _ never  _ listened.”

Ian hangs her head. “I found Bethany’s killer. It’s over. They will never hurt anyone else again.”

The sheer strength to Leandra’s pain could cut diamonds. “And will that bring back my baby girl? I don't want a hero, Marian, I want my daughter!”

Ian’s teeth clamp down on her lower lip and she squeezes her eyes shut. “It brings Bethany justice.”

Leandra hums and unimpressed  _ Mmm,  _ and she resumes rocking and watching the fire. 

Knowing she is dismissed, Ian turns back to the doorway where Anders is standing in wait. His face empathetic, he reaches for her hand, and she takes it. There is a small relief in her muscles from the feeling of his touch. But the past and the words and the gaping wound ripped through the Hawke family may never be healed. It has all been too much...too great...too tragic.

Taking the doorknob in her other hand, Ian pauses and looks one last look toward her mother before she pulls the room shut…

...and a Mother’s grief tightly seals it once again.


	11. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: attempted suicide

# 

# Chapter Ten

Their limbs entwine in a nest of broken branches. Broken are they, but tangled they feel almost whole. Fitted together, they curse and sigh. Moaning as one in a sound of desperation and release. A hollowed empty yearning for full. It is in these fleeting moments of sadness and passion that he is hers and she is his.

“I’m never leaving you again,” Anders says breathlessly. His hair, sweaty and loose, shrouds their faces. A veil, it cloaks them in a secret world that is only breaths deep.

Ian gazes up at him, feeling his hot breath on her lips. His eyes firmly hold his declaration, and it fills her with both solace and anguish. She would give anything to stay in these moments forever, if only she had any moments left to give.

His skin is warm, glistening and heated through the love that sustains a hopeful heart. The blood of a man who knows not what the future brings, but that this is the beginning of a new journey. One they will navigate together.

In stark juxtaposition, Ian’s skin shutters in the cold realization that this is no beginning. This. This is the _end_. She has always known they were forever doomed in this world. Neither will receive their happy ending. Hope is the stuff of fairytales and imaginary people, and Ian… Ian is very much real. Ian is very much hope _less_.

She pulls Anders tighter, as if to press herself through his ribs and join the devils inside him. “I love you,” slips from her lips and against his ear. “Never forget.”

She feels him pause. She feels him question her meaning. Before he can react, she rolls them both, and with her body, she convinces him forget.

After the sky falls, and the ground zooms back into focus, Anders and Ian lie quietly beside each other. Their fingers and arms still nested together. They stare at the canopy, breath slow and settling back into a normal rhythm.

“Ian,” Anders says and then pauses. He rolls onto his side. She can feel his gaze against her. “What did you mean in the Cathedral… when you said you would die either way?”

Ian sucks breath into her lungs. She holds it there. The canopy grips her stare, and she holds it there.

“You know the life I live, Anders. We all must die at some point. One way or another. That is all I meant. If not by Meredith Stannard’s blade, then some other wretch in the streets may well end it, I assume.”

“That is a morbid way to look at life.” She can feel the scowl on his face.

“I live under no delusions. I know my days are numbered. I am not destined to be grey.”

As Anders draws the breath for his next words, there is a soft rap of fingers against Ian’s door.

“I am sorry to bother you at this hour,” Bodahn calls from the other side, his voice muffled by the weight of the wood. “But you have a visitor The Viscount awaits you in your study.”

Ian rises from her bed. “The Viscount? It is the middle of the night. Of all the…”

“You don’t suppose Petrice escaped, do you?” Anders asks.

“Even if that is the case, why would the Viscount come _here_?”

Ian’s bare feet pad across the floor. She rushes to her wardrobe, retrieving robes for them both.

“One way to find out,” Anders says, and they wrap themselves in soft silk and leave the room.

What they find in that study is unimaginable. And the news brought… unfathomable.

 

Aveline stands against the study walls as if to be supporting the entire house from caving in.

Anders sits on the settee, rubbing his fingers and knuckles practically raw.

Viscount Dumar leans back in the chair behind Ian’s desk, commanding a presence regardless of whose property. A lone candle flickers on the desk before him. Soft light barely illuminates a face that is as stern as it is arrogant.

And Ian stands motionless in the middle of it all, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, her teeth gnawing on the Viscount’s words.

“What do you mean, she won’t see trial?” Anders growls into his knuckles. “What do you mean Kirkwall will not know her crimes?”

“Simply that. While her acts were unconscionable, the knowledge of a sister committing such heinous crimes will only further damage Kirkwall. The city is fragile, now more than ever. If the public loses faith, we are all doomed.”

“What you mean to say is if your poor learn the truth about this foul city, and the secrets their leaders hide, they will revolt,” Ian sneers. “If they learn not even the Maker’s chosen will protect them, they will question. They will question you. We cannot have the people question their leaders… We cannot let them see what hides in your closets. Ignorance is malleable for the rotten. Truth is dangerous.”

Ignoring Ian’s grumbles, Dumar continues. “It is not to say Petrice will not be punished. She will never be allowed to hurt again. The Templars have long been equipped to handle the minds of those whose sickness is too great.”

“There is a process,” a voice says from the shadows in the far corner of the room. Meredith Stannard steps into the dim light. “A branding of lyrium is sealed to the brain. It represses such wild thoughts and feelings. Petrice will live her days within the Chantry walls, calmly working, as she will have no other desire.”

Anders’ knuckles crack, and he rises to his feet. “This is madness! The city deserves to know! Justice must be served!”

“He’s right,” Ian snarls. “The very people who were trying to cover this up should not be left to succeed in their endeavour.”

The Viscount stands and leans over her desk. “Let me make this clear to you both, as I have to the Guard Captain. It is merely a courtesy that I come here at all. This is not up for debate. You need be aware that the law will pardon your own acts of magic _only_ if this matter stays resolved.”

“How are we to trust anything of this?” Ian glares at the Viscount.

“I should have let you kill her when you had the chance!” Anders fumes.

“Perhaps they should be allowed to witness the lyrium ritual,” Aveline says softly, still supporting the beams from toppling down entirely.

Dumar nods. “If that is what it takes,” he says, and with his purpose over, he exits the room.

Walking past Ian, Meredith pauses to say, “Remember your compliance. We would not want to see either of you meet a similar fate.” Arrogantly, she follows the Viscount out of the study.

It takes all of the power left in Ian’s body to not attack the woman on the spot.

Before Aveline leaves the room, she rests her hand on Ians crumpled fist. “I…” she says, her eyes fixate onto the floor. “I am sorry... my friend.” And Aveline trails behind the other leaders of the ill-fated city of Kirkwall.

 

The day that follows is covered in a fog for both the minds of Ian and Anders.

In the early morning, the news is announced and spreads across the city like a wildfire. Every cryer, every paper, even the rag of Varric’s yell about the end to the chaos that ravaged Lowtown. The message is all the same.

_Praise Marian Hawke, our champion, for she found the beast who murdered those poor innocent lives. The beast was taken down by her hand while she saved a lowly physician, taken by the murderous Ripper Qunari._

The scapegoat’s body had been quickly strung up outside the hall of Viscount. And since, hordes of onlookers have washed through the streets to witness the lifeless Qunari dangle there. He is hooded, though, his horns were ripped through. The Viscount’s reminder to all as to whom the city's _true_ enemy is. And as such, the Qunari district has permanently closed their streets to all. Commotion echoes through the air from a chant demanding that they vacate Krikwall entirely.

The facts have been skewed so far from the truth that they are unrecognizable. Altered and used are they by the Viscount to put pressure on his unwanted guests. A strong-armed message to the Arishok to heed the public’s demands…

Ian and Anders stare at it all from the crowd, frowns on their faces. People pat Ian on the shoulder, sharing their thanks and congratulations. But she just stares ahead, watching as a light breeze rocks the body back and forth. A poor wretch dangling on the end of Kirkwall’s rope of lies.

 

When the time comes, Ian and Anders make their way through Hightown without a sound. And without a sound, they stand on a shrouded balcony in the Gallows. And they watch as two Templars drag Petrice screaming and struggling down to a waiting Meredith and Cullen. Meredith utters ritualistic words while Cullen pulls forth a sun-shaped iron that glows blue-hot.

Petrice screams and cries again, pleading with Cullen not to do it, but he presses the iron to her forehead, and with a ceremonial hammer, strikes the end three times.

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap._

And the crying ceases.

The Templars drag the limp body back down the hall. Petrice’s eyes open, they stare emotionless for thousands of yards. A blue brand of a sun glows and pulses on her forehead. Slowly, it fades away until she is out of sight.

 

Two weeks pass from the day the world lied. Two weeks of living as an empty vortex encased by a wisp of a thing that people refer to as _Champion_.

The day lives on in Ian’s mind. It repeats and repeats. Each time she thinks of it, she recalls a new painful detail. The soft creaking sound of the swaying rope. The flies that had begun to circle the body. The details of the lyrium iron. The way the metal glowed otherworldly with an iridescence that seemed as if to dance. The way Anders’ hand felt in hers. The sound of leather creasing as their gloves squeezed together. The echo from the tapping iron. The emptiness in Ian’s body. The rage building in Anders.

Staring off from her office desk, Ian attempts to stop the replay in her mind, and she looks toward Anders. He had kept his word and moved into her estate, and she placed a small writing desk at the edge of the room just for him. He now sits there feverishly writing something that so far, he has refused to share with her.

They are trying to live on as if life is normal, but nothing is normal. For Ian, it is all an empty facade. They smile and hold each other, but it, like everything else, feels like a lie. She can see Anders slipping into madness, the lies the establishment tells fueling his fire.

Ian lives with the call of her dark deal plaguing her dreams. Every night, every blasted night, the demon calls to her, reminding her of the price she must pay for finding Petrice.

Anders stops writing, turns to her, and smiles. “Shall we go to bed?” he asks, and she nods.

She follows him, soaking up every inch of him. The ridiculous old coat her insists on wearing. The way he never manages to capture all of his hair in the tie at the base of his neck. The way his skin feels on her as they make love. The way his breath heats the shell of her ear. The way he whispers his love to her. The way he sleeps beside her. They way his chest rises and falls. The way the cool moonlight coats him in light blue.

He looks peaceful there.

This. This is how she wants to remember him. This is how she wants to leave him. It is time.

Ian slips from the sheets and tiptoes through the room without a sound. She takes a note she had written days ago from a box on her nightstand, and places it on the table beside the fireplace. No need for formal attire, she pulls her long coat over her nightgown. She wears her boots, though she does not tie the laces. And she places her hand on her mother’s door as if to say goodbye, before sneaking out of the estate.

The damp, still air of Kirkwall hangs like a curtain. Her boots grinding bits of dirt and stone against the ground, the only sound. She walks through the city alone, though she feels the presence of dark, hungry eyes upon her with every step. When she arrives at her destination, she almost feels relieved to be there. She enters the old hovel. Her hands stroke the walls where her sister’s blood had been. She slowly approaches the center of room, and she sits where Bethany’s body had laid.

Ian closes her eyes and whispers, “I’m sorry that I failed you, Bethany, but I shall join you soon.” Following with a swift intake of air she yells, “I know you are there demon! Enjoy your sacrifice!”

She pulls her cigarette case from her pocket and opens it. Inside is a single hand-rolled cigarette, but unlike her regular cigarettes, this one she carefully rolled with a potent amount of lyrium days ago. She had soaked the tobacco in liquid lyrium bought from a shady dealer by the docks. Throughout the leaves, she had sprinkled lyrium powder bullied from a guy in the Hanged Man of which owed her a favor. She carefully put everything together and rolled it in secret. It has sat in her cigarette case, burning a hole in her chest ever since. Thrumming with it’s lyrium song, it waited for the night when she would cross over to the demon one last time.

She strikes a match and lights the seemingly innocuous thing, and she quickly draws in the smoke. She dips her head back and rolls it along her shoulders, holding the drug in her lungs for as long as she can before opening her eyes and exhaling.

She watches as the smoke sparkles and dances and coats her in a dream. It is pleasant and she draws in another puff while shrugging her coat off her shoulders, allowing the euphoria to shine on her skin. She continues puffing and slipping deeper into the Fade, until she takes a moment to finish that carefully made cigarette, and smiles into the glittering haze enveloping her.

“I see you have finally come to pay your debt,” a voice says in the distance and all around her. The haze turns to mist, thick and shiny and red. Ian’s gown turns pink, then splotchy with red as slimy tentacles begin to wrap around her from behind. “Have no fear, child of the fade,” the voice whispers in her ear. “Soon, you will become everything you ever dreamed.”

“I just want to pay my debt and see Bethany once again.”

In that moment Ian feels a calling in her head. It sounds like Merrill, but she shrugs it off as her subconscious trying to stop her from her path.

The tentacles wrap around Ian’s arms, they multiply and spread down her fingers. They extend from her fingertips and harden to long, red pointed claws. The demon rings _Do It_ through Ian’s mind. _Join with me in eternity._

Ians fingers glide down her arms and a sparkling rain hails down on her. She smiles and lies back onto the ground. It is warm and soft like a sheepskin rug. The demon leans over her, but it is not a grotesque creature of nightmares. Instead, it is a shining ball of light.

“Ian! Ian! Hear me! Hear me please!” a pleading lilt yells through the glimmering rain.

“What is it, Merrill?” Ian asks faintly, smiling at the ball of light. She reaches up to touch it, and it wraps around her hand and travels down her arm.

“No!” Merrill’s voice screams. “I’ve found her! Back, demon!” A burst of energy ricochets through the air, slamming into the light before it consumes Ian.

Everything soft and shining vanishes, leaving behind the twisted figure of the demon, and it hisses into darkness.

Merrill steps through, her hands forward and pulsating the fade around her. “You will not have her!” she hollers and sends another shockwave into the demon’s gut.

It doubles over into itself before hissing again, every tiny tentacle turning barbed and pointed at Merrill. Barbs shoot from it and strike her all over, but it is as if Merrill’s skin is made from rock, and every barb falls away with no effect.

The demon screams, a scream louder than anything Ian has ever heard. It shrieks in her ears and rattles her brain. Though she tries to shield herself, it is too powerful, and it brings white pain throughout her body. The effect must get through Merrill’s defenses, as the elf crumbles to the ground, covering her ears and yelling for help.

Blue electricity flies through the air like a shooting star colliding into the demon and ceasing its psychic scream. It looks like Anders’ steps through the black surrounding them, but it is not Anders at all. His skin shines and pulses like lightning, and his eyes do not just glow, they burn through the darkness like beacons. A harrowing voice fills the nothingness in the same way of the demon’s. “Leave this human,” he commands, “or you will see your end.”

The demon hisses again. “I will not listen to an abomination. You have no power here. She struck a deal, and the debt must be paid!”

Another shock of light speeds toward the demon, but it deflects it, sending it right back into Anders. He staggers briefly, but he regains himself only to send another and another bolt hurtling toward the demon.

Battle rages before Ian’s eyes. Demon versus demon. Spirit versus spirit. Supernatural versus supernatural. She grows cold and tired on the ground between them. Light and shocks streaming through the Fade. War cries and curses. But all Ian wants to do is rest. She lies down, and her eyes begin to flutter shut.

_“You are no match for me, Abomination! I feel you growing weak!”_

Through the slits of her fading vision, Ian sees a glow beyond that of the battle raging around her. The entire darkness surrounding her illuminates into white light. In the center, a blue, blurry figure appears. It grows closer, slowly coming into focus and taking a familiar shape.

“Bethany.” Ian smiles. Her body fills with warmth as her sister grins at her and cups her cheek. “Am I joining you?” she asks and leans into her sister’s hand.

“Not yet.”

It is then that the white light fades, bringing the battle back into view. The figure who is not quite Anders looks weakened. Merrill struggles to regain her power. And the Demon cackles maniacally, thundering its impending victory.

But Bethany raises her arms in the air, focusing her power, she creates a ball of pulsing energy above her. “You cannot have her!” she bellows.

Ian feels her body vibrate. _Everything_ vibrates as the ball of energy grows. Bethany’s eyes begin to glow, then her skin, then her robes, until she herself becomes a giant orb of piercing light. And with a boom that shakes the heavens, she releases it all into the demon, and it shrieks.

The shock knocks Ian unconscious. All is black until she hears Bethany’s voice calling her to return.

Ian’s eyes flutter open. “How...how can this be?” she asks, finding herself cradled in Bethany’s arms.

“Though your will was lost, the wills of those you love were strong.” Bethany smiles, and at that point, Ian is unsure whether the being before her is actually her sister...or something else. “It is not your time, Marian Hawke. The Maker has so much more planned for you.”

“Are you...are you her? Are you... _Him?”_

She leans in and whispers. “Perhaps you should learn to properly wield the gifts the Maker has bestowed upon you. Though for now, all you need to do is... _wake up_...”

 

The air drawn into Ian’s lungs is sharp and cold. She gasps and her eyes shoot open. She is back in the hovel. Her body trembles, and everything in her screams for her to flee. But she is stuck, for arms hold her tightly in place, and a voice hushes at her to relax.

“Ian, breathe. Ian, it’s me. Ian, Ian, Ian.”

As her brain catches up to her surroundings, Ian sees Anders is the person holding her, and she flings her arms around him. “How did you find me?” she asks as she pants.

Tears drip down Anders’ cheeks. “You are a stubborn woman, you know that? I followed you. You should not have been dealing with a demon. You know nothing of magic, Ian. It only ever wanted to feed off of you.”

“Was that you...that blue-glowing...creature?”

Anders’ gaze darts around nervously. “I was there...but mainly it was...the spirit of Justice. It… it lives within me, and I within it.”

Ian notices bandages wrapped around her arms where the red claws had slit gashes through her skin. “You saved me…”

Anders smiles and shrugs. “You save me, I save you...eye for an eye, and all that.” His face grows serious again, a furrow forms in his brow. “I lost you once, Ian. I’m never losing you again.”

“Anders…” Ian says solemnly. “I see now that I was meant for more. I must fight the injustice. I must learn how to wield my powers. Will you help me? Kirkwall needs us.”

Anders helps her to her feet. And hand-in-hand, the pair walk to where Merrill and Varric await them in the Hanged Man.

Upon seeing Ian, the elf collides with her in a frenzied barrage of hugs and kisses and happiness that she is safe. Varric takes them to his private room in the tavern where Isabella and Fenris sit waiting.

And it is there that the group drinks ale and Ian divulges _everything_. The truth of the murders. The corruption in the Viscount and the Chantry. The discovery of the Templar’s power.

And it is there that a seed is sown. A seed of revolution. An oath to fight against the injustice ravaging Kirkwall. Differences aside, they all toast and plot and dream. They vow to work together...

The nemesis of neglect.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done!!! I can not tell you how proud I am to actually finish something so very important to me. Thank you so much for reading it. It's been a wild ride! Some day I hope to write a sequel, but until then: Take care, my lovelies. Thank you for your support and kind words. You helped me fight my own demons. <3


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